I was going to wait to show this one because it's one of the ones that did not get into QuiltCon 2017, but there were two posts I just saw on Instagram that inspired me to post right now. One is by LeeAnn of niftyquilts, the other by roderick752 (Roderick Kiracofe). Both of those are traditional H quilts. This is my improv version. As you might notice, when I take an idea and run with it, it can go off the rails pretty quickly! I really enjoyed making this though. It was special enough to warrant hand quilting which, these days takes me a long time.
Such a simple construction, but look what happens when you take a simple idea and just let go of some structure. In this case, I made a three part section of light, dark, light for the middle of the blocks. Then I made some long strips sets of dark and light. I cut them up to add to each side of the middle. Sometimes this would create an H, sometimes not, depending on how I did the value placement. I also paid no attention to the width of the strips. Some of this was out of the scrap bin, so those strips were whatever width they came in. Other times I cut from yardage, but also without regard to any particular size. I cut what "looks right".
In most cases I added at least one other set of light/dark strips sets to the top and bottom or sides of the block, until the block was a decent size. I put them up on the design wall and rearranged until I liked the layout. I had to fill in with extra pieces of light or dark to make it fit together.
In the end, this is a simple 20 block quilt with 5 blocks in each column. But it's also an alternate grid layout because I didn't try to line anything up horizontally.
When it came to quilting I used about 6 different colors of Aurifil or Sulky 12 wt thread. That's my preferred weight for hand quilting. When the Sulky runs out, I'll switch to using all Aurifil (though that will take a long time!). Colors used: white, off white, light grey, navy, medium blue and red. The red is used more sparingly just as an accent and to delight the up-close viewer.
Now that I know this quilt is not going to QuiltCon, I have no big plans for it. I think it will be a wall hanging in my own house, but I have no urge to sell it. It would cost a fortune with all the hand quilting! Also, my maiden name is Hammond, so the the H quilt is of family significance. I hope it is treasured for a long time. It's crib sized, so perhaps there will be a baby in the family that will get it some day.
