eo-4 Sagebrush Perspective - Final Quilt

The final assembly step for the Sagebrush Perspective quilt is the addition of binding. I used the same gray fabric from the Star of Bethlehem quilt.

The surprises in this process are the distortion in the blocks due to the irregular angles, the lack of perspective due to the large pentagons in the top row, and relative darkness in the blocks. When I chose the colors for this series, I was going for a lot of bright and light colors. This is the lightest of the three quilts but still appears muddy. 

In a way, I wish I could complete this series and then start over with new colors.

eo-4 Sagebrush Perspective - Quilting

The quilting design for the Sagebrush Perspective quilt is pretty straightforward. First, the plan is to 'stitch in the ditch' along the seam between each row in one continuous pattern. Usually when I do this, I end up with distortion in the back fabric as the layers seem to slip slightly along the direction of stitching. However, with the white border, I did not want to have a bunch of lines in and out of the quilt at each row.

Around the border, I wanted to use a circular pattern. I found a bowl - 5" diameter - and traced it in a side-by-side pattern. The tracing was completed with a marker that will fade with time and/or heat.

After completing the quilting, I trimmed the sides.

eo-4 Sagebrush Perspective - Pinning in Preparation for Quilting

As with the prior three quilts in this series, I used safety pins to attach the three layers of the quilt. This quilt will use a green backing fabric from an old cotton sheet.

For the pinning, I focused on the white border. For the Ladders to the Stars quilt, I did not pin to the edge - and ended up with some bunching/wrinkles in the back of the quilt. I also tried to pin in the center of the blocks.

eo-4 Sagebrush Perspective Top Assembly

To assemble the top, each row is stitched together first. Then, the rows are sewn to one another - attempting to maintain a random stagger between each. Finally, the color block is trimmed to a 30" square.

A couple of surprises from this process: first, the shadow piece ends up being a pretty tiny part of most of the squares. Second, as the blocks size shrinks, I did not do a very good job of making sure the pentagon size was reduced by an equal amount. As a result, the top blocks seems just more closely spaced.

After assembling the color block, a white border was added. The border uses a 7" strip on three sides and a 9" strip on the bottom side.

eo-4 Sagebrush Perspective Row Assembly

The rows for eo-4 have declining block sizes. The intent is to 'randomly' align the seams - instead of squaring up the edge of each row from one edge. The first three rows are shown below.

Once the blocks for each row are sewn together, the row widths will vary. Partial blocks will exist on some edges.

eo-4 Block Assembly

To begin the block assembly, I started by cutting out pentagons in green fabric.

Next, I added the 'shadow' fabric.

Then, I proceeded to add light toned fabric around to each of the pentagon sides.

After adding pieces around the entire pentagon, then I trimmed the blocks to the intended size.

The colors in the photographs are not great - I am having trouble with the lighting in my sewing area. Hopefully I will figure out some improvements.

This process will be the same for all of the blocks. In this example, I ironed each block after adding another piece. There are few nice aspects to this block assembly approach. First, there is very little waste. You can pick small pieces and just keep adding to the block until it is large enough. Second, the final block size is something you trim to, so this avoids my utter inability to maintain an exact seam allowance!

eo-4 Block Design

Each block of the eo-4 quilt will be designed around a pentagon (green) and a shade piece (medium-toned fabric). The block design is inspired by an activity described in Fifteen Minutes of Play by Victoria Findlay Wolfe.

The intention is not to have each block be identical - but instead to use:

• block size in each row
• pentagon to represent sagebrush
• shadow piece

as the unifying factors in the quilt. I am not sure someone will really know what they are looking at, but I hope the feel of endless terrain is conveyed to some extent.

The picture below shows the assembly process for the block. The outer square shows the block with the seam allowance, the inner square is the final block. To assemble the blocks, the pentagon will be cut such that it will fit inside the final block dimension - but the pentagons will be randomly shaped (1). A medium scrap for the shadow piece will be added to one edge (2).

After adding the show block, the top edge of fabric joining pieces (1) and (2) will be trimmed, and a piece of light toned fabric will be added (3). Now, the edge between (1) and (3) is trimmed, and piece (4) is added. This process is repeated until all of the edges of the pentagon have been sewn to light-toned scraps. The final addition step will be to trim the edge of (6) and (2) - possibly also (3) - to add a final piece of fabric (7). 

At this point, the block can be squared up to match the final block dimensions (outer edge). 

For this quilt, a total of 122 blocks are required. The list below shows the list by final block dimension (when sewn into the quilt).

• 6 x 5" blocks
• 7 x 4.5" blocks
• 8 x 4"
• 9 x 3.5"
• 10 x 3"
• 12 x 2.5"
• 30 x 2 " (2 rows of this block size)
• 40 x 1.5" (2 rows of this block size)

The plan is to start with the largest blocks and work my way down. I am a little worried about using up the green fabric before I complete the quilt top. I figure I can piece together the smaller blocks out of scraps if I need to.

eo-4 Sagebrush perspective

The Eastern Oregon quilt series is intended to comprise of seven quilts using Kona cotton in colors inspired by Eastern Oregon in the fall. So far, I have completed three quilts using traditional designs. The fourth quilt will be a unique design - my first attempt to create an abstract representation in a quilt.

The inspiration is a desert landscape of sagebrush. I plan to add perspective in the design to show an expanse of sagebrush - as far as the eye can see...perhaps from a car window.

The sagebrush itself will be a pentagon (sage green!) surrounded by scraps of light and medium fabric. The bottom of each block will include a darker color for a 'shadow'.

I plan to have ten or eleven rows - with the final color block region spanning a 30" x 30" square. The block dimensions for each row will become smaller. The larger block will be 5", the smallest will be 1.5". Surrounding the color block will be a white frame; a border of at least 6", possibly with a wider strip along the bottom.

The back of this quilt will be green. I dyed a white sheet a pale green color. The border/binding will be gray. I am hoping for a Polaroid picture effect.