Shattered Rainbow

I put the last stitch in the binding of my rainbow quilt last night, and I am so in love with it!  If I could, I would have taken twenty photos of it!  That's the bummer of making a queen sized quilt though, it's so big that there are only so many ways to photograph it.  Adding to the difficulty was the fact that after several straight days of beautiful sunshine, it poured down rain for exactly fifteen minutes last night, so the grass was still a little bit wet this morning.  Glad the deck dried more quickly!

To make the quilt, I used my Improv Piecing technique.  I used the same process last summer when I made Serendipity, and since making that quilt with its scattered explosion of color, I knew I wanted to make a rainbow/color wheel quilt with the same style.  I use so many scraps in my quilt backings, that very few get put into my scrap jars, which really is a good thing for me.  So, it just took some time for me to build up enough scraps for it. The quilt is so huge though, a whopping 88" x 96" queen, I'm thinking that I may have saved up too many!  Apparently, I accumulate enough scraps for one queen sized scrap quilt per year.

I've named this one Shattered Rainbow, and the biggest difference between this quilt and Serendipity (other than the obvious color placement), is that I made 8 inch finished blocks on this quilt instead of 12 inch.  Since I wanted to be able to blend the colors gradually around the quilt, smaller blocks worked better.

On the back, I created a wide rainbow bordered by this awesome polkadot in two soft shades of gray. I like that the gray dot looks very dreamy and cloud like- the perfect place for a rainbow!

One of the things I like best about this quilt is the scrappy binding.  Instead of choosing a single color, or randomly sewing strips together for the binding, I actually planned it out, which is something I've never done before.  Each color section has binding that matches.  There are some places where one binding color spills over into the next, but for the most part, the plan worked!

I just love scrappy quilts.  Aside from the fact that they are so interesting to look at, they are so much fun to make.  Sewing fabrics together and recalling each quilt that the scraps came from is a nice trip down memory lane!