Rainbow Strip Exchange Quilt!

The UCMQG had a fabric exchange in 2014 when I first joined the guild… Bright Rainbow colors in 2.5 inch/WOF strips.

It took a long time to figure out what to do with my strips, but once I saw this pattern, it was decided. (You can google "Super Fast Jelly-Roll Quilt" if you want. Here is the graphic that will indicate it's the correct one:)

This method is really fun! I enjoyed it a lot and would love to make another quilt in a different color scheme at some point.

I decided to put the colors in Rainbow Color order, with an equal number of each color. I *think* I used 42 strips total, but I can't be sure. My mind is thinking I used 6 strips in each of the seven colors I had.  (When I looked up which order the colors should be in, I discovered that pink is not part of the rainbow! I'm sure most of you already know that and probably also have the order of the colors memorized.)

You sew the strips end to end… the whole length went back and forth in my basement three times! You can't see the entire length here… just trust me. It was crazy long.  And please excuse the messy basement. It gets that way sometimes. :)

Folding your long strip accordion style is much more practical that spreading it across the whole basement.

Here it is after a few side to side seams are in.

It's getting wider and shorter!

And wider and shorter again...

And eventually it was the perfect amount of wide and short! BUT… what the heck is that purple and orange Halloween'ish corner??? I was not okay with that. (If you ever decide to make this quilt, put the colors in randomly instead of repeating the order of the rainbow colors over and over. It made all the greens meet up in clumps and created that purple-orange gathering.)

To fix the Halloween corner, I decided to cut the quilt into three columns and remove the offending section. I replaced it with new strips from the exchange (that hadn't made the first cut) and from fabric in my stash.

Much better! I added some white in between the columns and as borders.

Finished! Machine quilted by Stacey G. in horizontal loops.

I used a simple black and white scheme on the back to balance out the bright colors on the front.

It's hard to see here, but somehow the white strip ended up with exactly three rows of loops, almost like it was planned. Stacey said it was just a lucky coincidence! Serendipitous, I'd say!

Here is a closeup of the quilting pattern. I love it!

I used scrap binding from other projects and a few of the remaining strips from the exchange to make a scrappy binding.

A close-up of the backing… I'm not sure what the line is called, but it's from the Peanuts gang and is obviously Woodstock and Snoopy having a conversation. :)

I had another trimming mishap with this one… I really need to be more careful. I also noticed some of the quilting stitches coming out, like one side had been snagged and that allowed the thread on the other side to pop up for about an inch and a half length. I just did a little fmq to tack it back down and secure it. I followed the stitching line, and probably could have matched the stitch length better, but it got the job done. I don't think anyone would notice unless they were looking for it. I'm glad I'm getting to the point where I know things don't have to be perfect in quilting! It's just all part of the experience.

All in all, I really love this quilt. My daughter is super excited that it's for our family to enjoy. She has been asking when it will be ready to cuddle for several days now. :)