My First Bottled Rainbow I SPY Quilt

I've been lurking through other blogs lately at the many creations of Bottled Rainbow quilts.  I wanted to try making my own too.  I loved the idea of all the colors and using up scraps which I have a ton of.  I also wanted to make my quilt be an "I Spy" quilt as well since I use a lot of whimsical prints and this particular quilt will be going to a little girl.  I ordered my Kona solids off Etsy.com and spent a whole afternoon one Saturday matching up my scraps to my solids.

I also had a lot of batting scraps so my only expense for this quilt was the purchase of the solids and the unbleached muslin I used for the backgrounds.

I cut my Kona solids into 3" strips and sewed them onto the unbleached muslin rectangles.  The next step was to sew the rectangles onto the batting pieces.....

I used a wide zig zag stitch to do this....

I then trimmed the excess batting....

The bichon was restless with me spending so much time at the sewing machine so I put his dog bed upon the table and he was content.  He could watch me, look at the patio door and be content!

So content, that after a few minutes he was snuggled down and snoring away!!!

I wanted the "frayed edge" look to my quilt so I sewed in about 1/8 inch around the borders of each scrap piece.....

Below are all nine of my blocks.....

After all the blocks were completed I sewed them together.  I originally had the black block in the middle but messed up as I was sewing them together.  Since the batting was so thick, my stitch kept getting tighter as I sewed, so there was no way I was going to rip out my mistakes and start over.  So this is it how it ended up......

I then put the back on the quilt.  I had some heavy green cotton, almost a twill.  I chose this fabric to make the quilt feel even thicker knowing this quilt will get used a lot outdoors or taken to the park and needed the extra padding for comfort!

This next picture show how "chunky" it turned out even after trimming the seams....

and the bichon is in my space again!

I chose not to bind this quilt since it was so thick.  I used yarn and tied the corners of each block...... 

I then ran it through the washer and dryer twice to let it fray up so I could trim the many strings.....

I'm loving the look of the frayed edges!!!!

I only had one scrap of fabric that came loose that I will have to hand stitch back into place...

and here it is all completed, folded up and ready to go to a special little baby named Macyn.  This small quilt will hopefully be carted to the park and out into the backyard for lots of fun in the sun this summer!

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