The Crazed Crusader – OBW WIP

I took a One Block Wonder class last autumn with the irrepressible Meguey Baker. She’s hot stuff, let me tell you; she has a few tricks up her sleeve that make it well worth taking a class if you get the opportunity to do so. The class was held at what has become my favorite not-so-L QS, A Notion to Quilt, in northwestern Massachusetts.

Since I’m a spazz, I brought two fabrics: a gorgeous large-scale floral very much in keeping with the book’s recommendations, and also a set of full-yard Batman panels, which was what my heart wanted. Meg suggested I go with my heart, and this is the result. The white you see is the batting, it's not quilted yet.

Back - the original panel with a few borders added:

As always, the outcome simply can’t be anticipated from looking at the uncut fabric; some of these blocks are surprisingly lovely.  I’ve started quilting this twice and unpicked it twice, because my skills aren’t up to the picture I have in my head.  It's just going to have to wait, because my mental image is set and I'll be unhappy with anything else now.

I did go back for another OBW class just recently, mostly because that panel got me out of the proper cutting technique and I wanted to wrap my mind around that. Meg was clever enough to help another student, whose pretty-but-a-bit-lackluster fabric produced disappointing results, come up with a sparkling layout that had us all excited. It was so great to spend a day with like-minded individuals playing with fabric, and my original floral is now on the design wall getting rearranged daily. This will almost certainly get quilted more quickly than (and probably before) my Crazed Crusader!

Before ......