My Emerald Finish

Thanks to everyone who shared an opinion last week on what colors to use as accents in my Emerald Challenge quilt! I'm happy to say that I finished it today.

After reading the comments, I bought the exact blue of my cutting mat that several people thought was part of the quilt. And then decided not to use it.

Still not in love with anything, I went back to my original dark brown solid, thinking I could still make my original vision work.

 Nope. 

Since I didn't like it anyway, I figured I had nothing to lose, so I cut it up into irregular strips, perpendicular to the original green columns. (Here it is randomly arranged back together.)

Then re-auditioned all the colors I tried the first time around (you know, because they worked so well originally...).

beige

light green

orange

and finally, blue

I liked the blue and went with that.

Thanks to everyone who suggested cutting mat blue as an accent! :)

 Here is my finished piece, a wall quilt, which measures approximately 26" x 21".

 I'm happy with it. It's more modern and abstract than probably anything I've ever done, but I had a lot of fun making it and will happily do something along the same lines again.

 And here's what I really like about it: the quilting. I rarely never show close-ups of my quilting because it's just not that remarkable (or even good). But I thought this quilt was a prime candidate for some of Angela Walters' techniques, so I pulled out my e-copy of her book and chose three different motifs to use.

Here's a close-up of all three. I especially love the boxy one in the center and was pleasantly surprised by how good it looked in my first attempt.

Here's the back of the quilt. I have NEVER had the back of a quilt look this cool.

I'm linking this to the Emerald Challenge over at a.squared.w (and also Quilt Story Fabric Tuesday and Confessions of a Fabric Addict's Whoop Whoop Friday).

Have you made anything with emerald?