Xbox quilt

About a year and a half ago, I entered a block in the Tim Holtz Creative Journey challenge.  I was one of 24 winners, which resulted in my block being pieced into a quilt alongside the other winners.  I also won a design roll of Eclectic Elements fabric; this design roll became the basis for the quilt I am sharing today.

 

I started with the idea of making 16-patch units from the strips in the design roll, then played with a few different ideas for a block to alternate with the 16-patch.  I settled on an "X" block; I'm not sure if there is an official name for this particular block, but when combined with the 16-patches the result becomes an Arkansas Crossroads quilt.

I supplemented the design roll with some scraps, and also purchased a few newer pieces, but the entire quilt is made from Tim Holtz fabric, other than a strip of chambray on the back.

The background fabric is Model Airplanes from the Correspondence collection.  There is not a lot of contrast between this fabric and some of the design roll fabrics; I chose to use them all anyway.  The design might not be as distinct this way, but I like the result.

I used a ruler to quilt a curve design in the print areas; this was inspired by an online class with Lisa Calle.  I repeated the curves in each block, but used a variety of background fills.  This one with matchstick quilting is one of my favorites, but I only did one block like this because of the time involved.  (I did several with a more relaxed back-and-forth fill.)

Here's a photo showing the border quilting and the bias binding:

And here is a view of the quilting from the back:

I used two different fabrics for the back; they seemed to want something to separate them, so I inserted a strip of chambray.

I like both fabrics, but I really like the one on the right, and I sort of regret not using it for the entire backing.

This quilt started out to be a quick project with minimum investment, but I ended up spending so much time on the quilting that I'm a little more attached to it now.

I'm linking up with crazy mom quilts for Finish It Up Friday.