I started this quilt around March or April in 2025 (thank you Instagram for recording the dates). I'd seen a Rose City Originals making a version of a winding ways quilt in scrappy greens and decided that I needed to make this quilt too. Here's the link to Chris on Instagram putting his quilt blocks together. I bought the die set from Accuquilt Australia and got to cutting.

Putting these blocks together turned out to be a little trickier than the YouTube tutorial led me to believe. The centre bits weren't lining up properly so I ended up sewing them together into the top section, bottom section and then with lot's of pinning, the pieced long middle section. That worked a treat, so I continued to make lots and lots.

I realised that I didn't really have enough blue fabric prints in my stash, which needed some stash enhancement throughout the process. Honestly, if you saw how much fabric I have in my sewing room, you'd also be surpised at my lack of suitable blue fabrics.

After putting it together, I needed to think about the quilting which made me fold this up and put it away for a few months. You can't rush into these things, right? I really wanted some sort of quilting design that would enhance those secondary circular shapes but couldn't decide how to go about it.

At one point earlier this year, I had a few days off from work and no pressing things that needed attention (or maybe I did and decided to ignore them), so I got my quilt out, sandwiched it and ditch stitched with my sewing machine. 

I could have left it at that, but thought I'd just have a little go and hand quilting with some perle 8 cotton to see how it looked. I chose a dark orange colour thread and made a start. Gosh I really enjoy hand quilting and hadn't done it for a long time.

I've been teaching some ladies in my classes how to hand quilt and they're enjoying it (for the most part) and so it was time that I did a little of my own. I was working my way through that ball of thread rather quickly so decided to add a few more orange/gold/tan tones into the mix. A few years back, I went through a stage of buying lots of of perle 8 in all sorts of different colours, so I had plenty to choose from at home.

This quilting stage took a few months or stops and starts.  I'd take up the end of the dining table for a few days at a time and then put it away. This quilt is quite large so having it rest on the table was much easier than trying to manhandle it on my lap.

For the binding, I decided on a dark orange Speckled fabric by Ruby Star Society. It went well with my quilting thread colours and I do love how it turned turned out. 

Before I could call it finished, I unpicked all of the ditch stitching and I'm glad that I took that extra time to remove it. The quilt is sitting better without those tight machine stitches holding the blocks apart.

This morning I braved the washing machine with a couple of colour catchers. I only used two in there and in hindsight, should have used more as some of the lighter fabrics took on hints of blueish-grey. I'm not sure which fabrics 'leaked' but I feel possibly, it was the backing fabric.