Sunrise Celebration - Project Quilting

"Sunrise Celebration,"
20" x 31", made for Project Quilting,
Season 6, Challenge 2: Sunrise/Sunset,
Jan. 2015 in Yellow Springs, Ohio

Challenge recap for  "Sunrise/Sunset":

Your inspiration for this challenge is Sunrise/Sunset. Use what inspires you...the colors, the images, the things you do at this time of day.

When I saw that the challenge was Sunrise/Sunset, I knew immediately what fabric I wanted to use. When I purchased the hand-dyed browns and blacks for "Daybreak is Your Midnight", I also made an impulse purchase of some hand-dyed fat eights in a jewel-tone color wheel.

There were 11 different colors so if I made the strips 1" high and only used one color per column, my quilt would only be 11" high. I used a similar pattern that I used in "Daybreak" where I went 1 - 2 - 1 - 2 - 3 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 5 - 6, etc., although the middle column has more rotations of 1 and 2 and less of the blues to make it even out.

I decided that I wanted to do inset piecing on all the 6" stripes like I did on "Daybreak" but I also wanted them to be less subtle so in most cases I used inset pieces from two steps above or below that color.

Originally I was going to have all of the yellow at the bottom, but once I got the strips pieced, I felt that it wasn't working as well as it could, so it was time to improvise. I tried a few different arrangements and decided I liked the yellow on the top on the two outside pieces. Originally I wasn't going to use any sashing but I thought the colors would pop more if they had some black to play against.

I don't have a lot of black fabric in my stash (probably because I use it frequently) and I didn't have enough of the batik blue/black that I like to use, but I did have a black fabric that had little gold stars on it that was also an impulse buy. There was only 1/4 yard but that was just enough to use for the sashing and the binding. The stars made me think of confetti.

It is quilted stitch-in-the-ditch but since I liked the thick hand-quilting that I did on "Daybreak," I used some thin hand-spun maroon yarn and quilted three short stitched in all 90 of the inset pieces. I also couched some commercial chunky yarn along the sashing and around the inside of the binding.

In keeping with the colors and energy on the front, I chose this piece of fabric for the backing.

The colors, confetti stars, and chunky yarn all reminded me of the Sunset Celebration, held nightly in Key West, FL, which is how I got the name.

(In 2019 I had to replace the hand stitches, and you can read about that here.)

More about Sunrise Celebration

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To read more about Project Quilting, go here.

To see other entries for this challenge, visit the Sunrise/Sunset link up.