My Original Rainbow Quilt

In early 2021, I had only been quilting about a year, but thanks to the pandemic, I had already amassed a pretty big fabric stash. I decided to make an entire quilt without purchasing any new fabric. I was going to use up some of these scraps, doggone it! Make room for some new purchases!

If you're a quilter, you know that's not how it works. No matter how big the quilt, your scraps seem to multiply, despite how much you use. It's a sewing room miracle. But back to the story.

I drew up a design of my own, kind of a wonky log cabin block. I wanted to make a rainbow of colors that transitioned through the rainbow in a nice gradual flow.

This is going to be a long-term project, I thought. I'm not going to rush through this like a maniacal sweatshop foreman. Here, I'm going to put all my different colored scraps over here in this big box in the corner and I'll just bring it over to the table when I want to work on it for a few minutes. In the meantime I have all these masks to make, some zipper bags, a baby quilt . . .

Right. Yeah, that's also not how it works. Once I started building the blocks, I became obsessed with how to go from pinkish red to true red to red-orange to orange-red and build the block so that was happening in one corner and in the other corner I was working on how to go from pinkish red to reddish purple to deep plum.

I brought out my colored scraps color by color. My sewing room was a sea of orange and red one week, and purple and blue the next. Every phase I had a new favorite color.

I like an assembly line as much as the next girl (well, probably more) but this project had to be done block by block. Some blocks had to be redone to get the right fade in. My little design wall was overtaxed. I had to keep the cat out of the room as best I could.

Aaaaand again, not how it works. More times than I could count, I had to pick up blocks from the floor and pick the cat hair off.

Finally, I started to sew the blocks together. To me, a fairly new quilter, it seemed massive.

I sent it off to the longarm quilter, who chose the perfect variegated thread and swirly quilting pattern.

Now, to put on the binding. I do my hand-binding while watching TV. I think my husband and I were binge-watching Better Call Saul when I worked on my rainbow quilt.