Echino Quilt

I posted a few weeks ago about Modern Relief for Japan, and how I had made a quilt for that, which would be raffled off with dozens of other quilts, the proceeds going to Japan. 

And then it didn't happen.  There were some legal issues that forced Modern Relief to shut down.

Bummer!

So I needed to find something to do with this quilt I made.  Thankfully, I saw that Seven Islands Fabric was having a quilt drive in participation with Patchwork Tsushin in Japan, who will be distributing quilts to those affected by the earthquake and tsunami. 

Seven Islands is just down the road from me in Torrance, so I was hoping to go there myself, as opposed to mailing it.  Last week I contacted them, set up a time to bring it to them (which was today), and whipped up a label to put on the quilt.

Even though the quilt is not going to be raffled off, I thought I'd still show some pictures of it.  Please excuse our sad yard.  What you don't see is about 5 mole holes that the quilt is covering.

Here's the front.  All I did is take some patchwork Echino, and cut it into strips.  I did have to piece the strips to make them long enough, so I did some fussy cutting - should've got a picture of that.  I was so proud of myself that the piecing wasn't even noticeable!

And the back.  I just used the leftover solids from the front, and added the pink and this bird Echino print, which is one of my faves.

When I first wanted to make a quilt for Japan, I wanted to use strictly Japanese fabrics, so I did!  Everything, even the solids, is Echino by Etsuko Furuya.  To top it off, I bought it from the local Japanese fabric store, Momen+, also in Torrance.  (By the way, I was in there the other day, and they totally knew me.  I go there too much!  I'm gonna miss that store when I move!)

Once again, I did the binding completely by machine with no pins - and I'm getting better at it!  This is, by far, the best job I've done with machine binding.  Here's a look

And look at that corner!  All four corners came out perfect.

And the label.  I didn't know if I should put one on it, but Melissa encouraged me to.  She can be very convincing!  Unfortunately, my printer is not working, so I couldn't do my usual print-something-out-in-a-cool-font-then-trace-it-onto-fabric thing, so my horrible normal handwriting will just have to do.



I just realized that I didn't get a good picture of how I quilted it.  I just did random lines throughout, and it kind of looked like a spiderweb.  So I'm calling it "spiderweb quilting."

I don't know how much good this will do - those affected have been through so much, and this seems like such a small thing.  But I hope it gives a little comfort to someone.