Phoenix Rising is Up

Back in May, the center section was completed. The pieces were fused down & looking good.

Note to self: When using commercial solids, you need to stitch down the raw edges.  The solids are NOT the same as hand dyed fabrics that fused hard & fast.  Do the edge stitching BEFORE you layer the quilt. DO NOT get cocky & ahead of yourself!

The first round was to add the required flying geese.

It went fairly well and I was pleased. 

The on to the second round - applique was required and it needed to reflect the sun.

I actually did this the hard way - I appliqued each of the four sides and then attached them.  What I should have done was to attached the black border strips all the way around and then laid down the sun & the rays.  The alignment would have been easier, with smoother transitions. SMH. 

It was like I was looking to make this harder than it needed to be or else half my brain was somewhere else on this project day.

Last round was all about squares & rectangles! 

Parts lined up and ready for stitching

I wanted something big & bold to balance the sun sections.  Which meant I was thisclose on some of the fabrics and had to run out and buy a bit more. 

Of course, I discovered the shortage (one yellow rectangle, 2.5 x 6 inches) while I was up in Michigan so I couldn't get the last round on  & the quilt layered while I was up there. Talk about frustrating! But that was nowhere near as frustrating as what I did when attaching the first section of the final border.

Had to laugh at my mistake!  And bust out the seam ripper. Last but not least - the corners.  I couldn't just have plain corners, now could I? Nope - all seven of the warm colors needed to make an appearance to tie everything together.  The only way to do this was square in a square in a square.  And the only way to do that was to paper piece them. 

The extra fabric I purchased was to also cover the corners. Each corner has 25 pieces in an 8 inch square. Feels like you are going round and round and round forever.

The final quilt top of Phoenix Rising.

I like the back shot, too.

The  sandwiching was done using the board method and the quilting has commenced. I'll share that in the near future.