Moda Bake Shop - Scrappy Irish Chain

My latest quilt finish is featured over at Moda Bake Shop today!  This is my 10th MBS project!  It is one of my favorite quilts I have made in a while.  I just love postage stamp quilts - and to combine an Irish Chain and a postage stamp - LOVE!   It's a BIG 90'' square (and a whopping 2025  2''x2'' pieces in the front!), which is a little bit of a challenge on my sewing machine to quilt, so I decided to go with straight line quilting so I could use my walking foot :)

Unfortunately, the sun has not come out enough since I finished it for a good clear picture, booo.  I used 2 jelly rolls of ''Daysail'' by Bonnie and Camille - and 22 strips from a previous collection of theirs ''April Showers''.  I love how well these collections 'go' together!  They both are void of any mainly pink prints (yes!) and have lots of my favorite aqua/navy/reds prints.  For the 'chain', I chose to use Moda Bella ''Pond'' (it is VERY close to ''Betty Teal'') - it matches the color that is in small amounts of a few of the prints in both collections.  I think it would look equally well in many different colors - red, aqua, or even white or navy!  Oooooh, yes, I think it would look amaaaaazing in navy.

I did diagonal straight line quilting in every other square.  I love Aurifil thread - you can get so much more on a bobbin!  I think I only used 4 bobbins to quilt and bind this one, which is amazing!  And, doing the straight line quilting makes it go pretty fast too - it took me about 6 hours to complete the quilting, but my machine isn't real fast either.  Pedal to the metal!

backing:

I pieced the backing from 5 1/8'' yardage and leftovers from the front.  It was just 6'' too narrow with 2 panels of fabric to squeeze that top onto the backing.  So, I cut my 5 1/8 yards into two equal lengths of 92'' long and joined them together at the selvage (joining them at the selvage that does not have the printing on it with a 3/8'' seam).  At that point, it was about 86x92.  Then, I cut the backing lengthwise along the fold of one of the 92'' lengths.  I pieced 92'' long section that was solid/scrap squares/solid (all jelly roll strip width) and inserted it into that cut and that gave me the extra 6'' width that I needed to baste the quilt. I just used the scraps from the strip sets from the front to piece between two solid strips. It took 9 sections (+one square) from the leftover strip sets pieces and 3 Pond strips. I am glad I didn't insert it into the center, I really like it off-center!