Facets of Emerald: A Finished Quilt

Facets of Emerald is my first real experiment with the freeing (and sometimes stressful) process of  improv piecing, and it's my big March finish! I previously posted about this quilt here. 
*EDIT: These pictures are now pinnable - thanks for your patience while I figured out the issue!

The Pantone Color of the Year, emerald, had me thinking about jewels and how beautiful they are. Personally, I'm attached to amethysts, but emeralds amaze me. I also love jewel colors, and THEN, I got this slightly crazy idea in my head to make a jewel mini quilt. I Googled it up and found the outline of a jewel complete with facets - the planes of a jewel.

 

 I also simultaneously realized I had little to no green in my stash (or emerald), and decided it was time to buy some. So, hit up the sale section at Pink Castle Fabrics and bought a ton of fabric. Problem solved!

If you've been here before, you might know I'm obsessed with gray (and white) as neutral/background colors. I gathered all my grays with whites, and started to scheme.

 

I pieced the quilt together the old-fashioned, hard, pull-your-hair-out way - no paper piecing, because I just wanted the challenge (I also have not had much practice with paper-piecing yet... so I guess that also would have been a challenge). I did the green parts first, and made some bias cutting, but added the gray as I went along. Overall, I'd say I probably pieced in 6 different sections, and then put it all together. I didn't want it to be exact, which is why, for example, there is a strip of emerald at the top that doesn't line up with the rest of the jewel. It was relaxing to piece, most of the time!

 The infamous shoe picture :)

The quilt evolved over a couple of weeks. The husband will be the first to tell you that there were bits of green attached to his socks, and that we didn't have use of the kitchen table for at least 5 days. But it finally got done :)

 I love how you can see the difference in the thread colors, and thus, the outline of the emerald!

Luckily, right before my quilt top was finished, I bought my new Janome. I was able to free motion quilt to my heart's content. I only had a couple of tension problems - it was like a dream! I decided to use Connecting Threads - I used an emerald color, so that you could see some of the quilting on the jewel, and gray. I tried everything I could think of to fill in/compliment some of the spaces (I also used inspiration from Leah Day, and from Angela Walters' QuiltCon lecture on Craftsy - it's free! I highly recommend it if you are interested in machine quilting).

I had FUN. It was fabulous. Here were my favorite designs:

Tracing the leaves in the gray Simply Color fabrics, and tracing the Pearl Bracelets (I'm still convinced none of my quilts are complete without one of these prints :))

 

And they show up on the back, too =D

 Before binding, the leaf imprint on the back. I'm seriously in love and just want to use all the Simply Color leaf prints in everything now. Just so I can trace them.

 I traced some of the Laurie Wisbrun chairs, and much of this picture is inspired by the designs of FMQ queen Leah Day.

On the back, I used muslin, some of the solid yardage I bought in greens from Pink Castle Fabrics, and a block that was originally planned for the front. I bound the whole thing in Kona Emerald for an extra pop.

 

The quilt was perfect for scraps, but of course, I just made more scraps! Lol. I can't win.

 

Is anyone interested in seeing a mini- tutorial? I'll be making another version for my parents... so let me know!

This quilt can no longer be considered a mini - it measures out to 30.5" x 40.5". But I wouldn't have it any other way, because it's going to be a big, beautiful addition to my dining room. Watch this space for more from Project Color My Apartment and some dining room pics to come!

 No finished quilt or mini would be complete without a photoshoot with my little sister! It was SO windy (but gorgeous and 60 degrees!!!) at the park!

You can see all the  pictures of this quilt in my Flickr set. While you're there, check out all of the other seriously gorgeous emerald quilts over in the Emerald Quilt Challenge Flickr group.

I'm linking up to:

 

Link A Finish Friday @ Richard & Tanya Quilts

Fabric Tuesday @ Quilt Story