Rainbow Mountains

I finished this quilt top on the weekend that I had been working on since May. Four months for a king size beauty queen has got to be a record for me! This divine creature is made from the Delectable Mountains quilt block, which is actually quite traditional. I love using a traditional block in an unexpected manner! Also, who doesn’t love a hills hoist–one of the most Australian of Australian inventions.

I decided to call it Rainbow Mountains (after exhaustively using the #mollisparklesdelectablemountains hashtag on Instagram) because it represents quite a difficult period of my life. I’ve given you a glimpse of what’s been happening the past few months, and I’m sure many of you have had similar experiences. The world is fucking rough right now. Like pineapple up-the-bum rough. Despite that, I’ve tried to traverse the challenges to see the rainbows in every situation. Sometimes you’ve gotta climb a mountain to get the best view, and if not, you just build your own damn rainbow-coloured mountain. That’s what this quilt represents.

I’ve used 167 different Alison Glass fabrics, from a multitude of ranges, that were mostly in my stash. I say mostly, because when I started putting the concept together for this quilt, I realised I only wanted to use each fabric once. So for my May-birthday, Grandma Sparkles gave me her credit card, and I did some iso-fabric-shoping-birthday-therapy. Girl, you know it’s true, I. Love. You. My stash was light on Alison Glass blues, but hell, I bought a little bit of everything! I ended up using all but a handful of those saturated beauties.

I am so ready to send this to my longarmer, Leanne. We’ve already got the perfect panto picked out, but I need a backing fabric! I want the whole thing to be Alison Glass, which led me down the road to her wide backs. However, then I fell down that rainbow-hole and found out about her upcoming Art Theory fabric range. Have you seen it? Gah. Colour me impressed! I’m thinking the “Spectrum Feathers In Night” to give it the whole rainbow-wrapped-in-a-rainbow experience. Then do like a collage of black Alison Glass fabrics for the binding. That’s what’s up!

How sexy is the back of that quilt top, though? All those seams just make me go, “Did I do that?” And then I’m like, wait for the applause, because yes you did! :::hair flip::: I’ve gotta record how awesome they are because once this diva is quilted, you’ll never see them again. Even though I haven’t made a king-sized quilt in forever-eva, I’m pretty sure I’d make this one again.

I’ve had a lot of people asking me about patterns, tutorials, quilt-alongs, you get the idea. It’s something I’m contemplating if I can squeeze it into my sludge of 2020. It might be just the thing to make a rainbow out of another mountain! I’ll keep you posted on any hard decisions, and in between, I’ll probably try to get another few photo shoots done with my #RainbowMountainsQuilt. Thanks for all of your support and love through my own journey.