Road to Oklahoma

This finished Road to Oklahoma quilt is now a walk down memory lane since I started and completed it in January – June 2022. However, since I hand-delivered it to Grandma Sparkles in Oklahoma at the beginning of last year’s four-month, overseas holiday, I never got around to archiving it here on the blog. Fast forward to now, and Grandma Sparkles is here visiting me in Sydney for two months. What better time to reminisce, and walk you through the creation of this quilt? I know, right!?

Grandma had specifically asked if I could make her a quilt this time around. Now, don’t y’all go thinking that she doesn’t have any of my quilts. By last count, she has around thirty-seven of them. Some of them by her choosing, some of them by mine. But still, when your quilt mentor comes to you to request something specific, you stop your life. In this instance, she had bought a piece of home decor for her new house (she had just returned to Oklahoma, more on that in a bit…) Grandma wanted the quilt to have the same colour scheme, so I knew just where to jump from the dock.

I chose the Road to Oklahoma quilt block for obvious-to-me reasons, but for those who don’t know, I’m originally from a small place called Broken Arrow, Oklahoma! It seemed only logical that a quilt for Grandma Sparkles feature the Road to Oklahoma quilt block. The fact that there’s even a quilt block named after Oklahoma strikes me as a bit overwrought, but I guess if you design the block, you get to pick the name! Although, I’ve never seen a road anywhere look quite like this block! The irony–as I previously alluded–is that Grandma had just recently moved back to Oklahoma from Alabama. So I took inspiration from the painting, the block name, and this journey, to further the concept of her travels in the quilt.

I pulled every saturated bluey-greeny-tealy (but not too limey) fabric I had in my stash, and then did the same with their complimentary not-so-saturated low volume brethren. I wanted this quilt to be a punch of pattern play, so there’s not a single solid to be found. Don’t get me wrong, I love solids, but boy-oh-boy, do I love what you can achieve with tone-on-tone, blenders, and the lightly multi-coloured marvels hiding out in all of our stashes!

All of my squares and bazillion (felt like it, anyway) HSTs are 3″ as I wanted there to be a lot of collaged fabrics, but still get the size up pretty quickly. For reference one full quilt block becomes 10″. I didn’t really work from a pattern, as I much prefer to design-on-the-fly. Again, this is where the design wall comes in to save the day. I just started mixing and matching my HSTs with high and low volume squares, with a few fussy cut pieces thrown in for a bit of whimsy.

The real coup de foudre though was when I added this navy and gold metallic stripe by Rashida Coleman-Hale for Ruby Star Society. I’d had yardage of this fabric in my stash for a while, quite unsure where it’d wind up. I auditioned so many fabrics for the outer ring around the star; all of them falling flat. The navy in this stripe is just exactly the right hue (a dusting of yellow to push it towards super-dark teal, but still navy, also complimented by the gold in the stripe). Anyway, that’s my colour theory brain working in over-drive, as I knew a bold blue or green would rob the rest of the fabrics of their joyful saturation!

I also did something a bit odd when it came to cutting this fabric. Instead of cutting it on grain, I cut it on the bias / on point, so when positioned in the block this fabric felt like a boardwalk of steps surrounding the stars. This simple cutting manoeuvre reinforced my initial ideas about this quilt representing Grandma’s journey back to Oklahoma. Remember that road I couldn’t really fathom before? Well, I guess manifestation does work in mysterious ways!

Perhaps a slight overreach, but Grandma was born in Kansas, home of the yellow brick road. I feel like I was one, red ruby slipper away from going full Oz allegory! Even without that allusion, I am still enamoured with the results of this fussy cutting. It’s added a bit of modern pizazz to what is quite a traditional quilt block. Only in the land of Molli Sparkles does a Road to Oklahoma become a golden boardwalk! Work that runway!

The finished quilt top is made from forty-eight Road to Oklahoma quilt blocks with a finished size of 60″ x 80″. This is a wonderful large lap quilt / single bed size. However, if you need something a bit smaller, just change your squares and HSTs to 2.5″ (instead of 3″) which would give you a finished size of 48″ x 64″ with the same amount of blocks. This is a wonderful quilt pattern for confident beginners, or those looking to dive into your scrap bins. Can you imagine a rainbow low volume / high volume version of this with a black and white stripe road? Ugh, my body aches! It makes me want to join a quilt bee, real bad!

The backing started off as a conundrum, but in the end, I dived into the fabric stash and pulled out a cacophony of fabrics that met the colour brief. The top two were fabrics that I had had for ages, and knew I loved but would be impossible to use. While the bottom is a remnant of Speckled wideback in turquoise (also from Rashida Coleman-Hale for RSS) that I had leftover from another quilt. Basically, these fabric orphans came together to form a triumphant trio!

Once all of that was decided, I literally drove both quilt top and backing to Leanne at Mount Vincent Quilts for a rush long arming job. This edge to edge pantograph is called Andalusia and can be purchased at Urban Elementz. No sponsorship; I just think it’s a lovely panto that could work easily on a bunch of different type of quilts, so get into it! The hilarious thing is that when I was standing in front of Leanne discussing options, she said to me, “I’ve got the perfect design,” at which point we both independently pulled up Andalusia on our phones! Great minds think alike!

So here’s the obligatory shot of me hand-binding my Road to Oklahoma quilt in the car. Mr. Sparkles and I were on a road trip, so once again, it seemed most logical to imbibe this quilt with even more meaning! I used a fabric from Botanics by Carolyn Friedlander that has a touch of gold metallic on it to bring it all together. What a joy this was to hand-bind knowing the journey of its creation, combined with the trip it was about to go on around the world!

And so here my Road to Oklahoma quilt finally found and wound its way to its forever home. It hangs out with Grandma Sparkles in her living room, right below the painting that initially inspired it. I must say, this is a quilt that I’m very proud to have made–not just because of the techniques or craftsmanship, but because of the meaning it imbibes. The lap it lays on. The journey it invites. The Road to Oklahoma that it maps. And finally, the heart that it warms.

Title: Road to Oklahoma
Size: 60″ x 80″
Pattern: Road to Oklahoma block repeated forty-eight times
Fabric: Molli Sparkles curated bundle in teal high and low volume, combined with navy and gold stripe; inspired by a painting in Grandma Sparkles house
Piecing: Machine stitched on Juki TL-98P with Aurifil 40wt, White 2600
Quilting: Long arm quilting by Mount Vincent Quilts
Binding: Hand stitched with Aurifil 40wt, Light Jade 1148
Backing: Three fabrics from stash that met the colour way brief!
Timing: January 2022 – June 2022
Favourite Part: It lives in Grandma Sparkles’s house and heart!