A brighter shade of pale (lucky square)

A little while ago, this quilt top popped up in my google reader.

It is the Lucky Square quilt top made by the lovely Jess at SewCraftyJess, and she asked for volunteers to help test the pattern she has written for it.  I offered my assistance and Jess was kind enough to send me the pdf of the great pattern she has put together.  Over a few days, a whole bunch of cut squares and strips have gone from this:

to this:

to this!

I used the softer coloured fabrics from my fat quarter set of Anna Maria Horner's Field Study Collection, plus one other print, together with a lovely taupe-ish linen from my local quilt shop.

It would be fair to say that apart from putting this quilt together quickly, I am not a very good pattern tester.  This is actually the first quilt I have made using a pattern (um, yeah, I didn't mention that to Jess when I volunteered...) and I made a couple of tweaks like taking out a row and adding a border.  The great thing about Jess' pattern is that it had plenty of information for me to easily work out how to make the tweaks I wanted to, which I think is a very helpful feature.

My version finished 74 inches square (which is why I am struggling to hold the whole thing up in the pictures) and is now basted and ready for quilting.  For the quilting, I am planning to do a very simple straight-line crosshatch over the whole quilt, in a thread that co-ordinates with the linen (and should blend into all the coloured squares).

I went a little crazy on the back - I didn't have any large cuts big enough to do a solid back, so I picked a whole bunch of prints that go with the colours on the front.  This is the first time I have done a really wild quilt back, and I have to say, I like it.

I can't wait to quilt this up and see the finished quilt in all its glory.  I hear that Jess is planning to release the pattern in the week starting the 14th of January, so keep an eye out!