Mirage

 It's finished! And I've called it Mirage.  (If I could insert the blue heart emoji here, I would.)

I love how the colours transition from top to bottom - that was my son's idea. 

The pattern is Topsy by Sheila Christensen, but I've named this quilt Mirage for a couple of reasons.

 Firstly, when I met my husband he drove a 1979 Mitsubishi Mirage and it was blue like this quilt. 

The well loved Mirage - that is not my husband in the photo.

Secondly, my son loves Transformers, and there is an blue Autobot called Mirage.  

This quilt is for my son's 21st birthday, so it seemed appropriate to call it Mirage.  

I do love the blocks where I made the extra effort to pattern match the stripes. 

Although I love hand quilting, I knew long arm machine quilting would work better on this quilt for two reasons:

1. it's for a young man and it will probably need washing more frequently than my other quilts, and

2. it's massive and I didn't have the energy to spend months hand quilting it.  

So I had it custom quilted by my friend Rayna Clinton from Tui Song Quilting in Wellington, New Zealand. We chose the pattern together and I'm really pleased with it.  It's called Snakes Hexagons by Sharon Perry.

I put the wide back Onion Rings by Brandon Mably on the back and I love that too. 

Finished size is 105"w x 97"h after washing.  

I used the Queen sized blocks, but added extra columns and rows to make it bigger.  

You can read an earlier blog post about this quilt here. 

I think this quilt will be my most significant finish in 2021. I loved making it, and I'm really pleased that my son loves it too.  

Now it's time for the Peacock Party. What have you been up to this week?  Feel free to link up a recent blog post below. 

 

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Holiday Sewing Part 3 - Mirage

Yes, there's still more from my Christmas holiday sewing with my mum.

You probably know by now that I can't resist a bright pop of colour, so sometime ago I bought two sections of a Mirage panel by Northcott. 

While mum was here I suddenly had an urge to turn one of them into a wall hanging for my home office.  I decided to practice on the spare piece first, so I machine quilted it along the lines with my walking foot and verigated thread.

As usual, it took longer than I expected, but it was the holidays, so it didn't matter.

Mum kindly sewed down the binding, put on the label, and added the hanging sleeve (all those finishing jobs which take time).  She's taken the practice one home to hang in the spare room at her house, and one day I'll turn the other piece into a wall hanging for my home office. 

Here's the selvage in case you want to track it down.

If you didn't know it was a panel, you'd think it was pieced because the quilting makes the triangles pop.