Jack in the Box

Buckle up.  I have a long, wordy explanation for a new quilt today.

Generally speaking, I don’t listen to much pop music.  I enjoy listening to familiar songs and singing along, and with a house full of little people, it can be challenging to sample new music without knowing if the lyrics are clean.

Be that as it may, as my last hyperfixation over a Turkish drama (Sen Cal Kapimi) faded, I found myself on the hunt for something new to watch/listen to.  In my searching, I ran across the song Run BTS (by BTS), and, bingo, new hyperfixation.  My husband laughs that a 40 year old mom of 7 enjoys a K-pop group, but it is what it is.

One of the members of BTS, J-hope, released a new album called Jack in the Box.  It’s not my usual jam, but I both thoroughly enjoy meaningful lyrics as well as an album that tells a big story.

I watched the videos of J-hope explaining the concepts, story, and images behind the album.  Black and white played a prominent part, and I began noodling around an idea for a quilt.  I don’t generally work this way, inspired by music and a story, but this one demanded to be made.

I had to ponder and puzzle for a while first, as I’ve never made an optical illusion quilt, but when the math finally made sense in my mind, I was off.  Black and white.  There are too many shades of “white” in my stash, so I had to hope I had enough of one shade to finish this quilt.

Cutting, sorting, piecing of endless strips.  At this point, I was excited about the idea and it went quickly.  Fortunately, since my last attempts at strip sets, I’ve learned more about not stretching as I sew.  My strip sets laid flat nicely.

 

I would say subcutting the strip set was my biggest worry.  I would make or break the quilt with my cutting.  Not enough strips meant another strip set, and of course I sewed a set wrong, so I begged my seam ripper to cooperate with me.  It did.

As I laid it out, I was delighted by the movement.  My brother said he needed anti nausea medicine after looking at it, and my sister said her mind was quite sure she was looking at something round.  Excellent.

Then the challenge became the cubes.  The original concept art for the album has a pink and a blue cube.  First, I had to do some research and more noodling as to how to create the diamond pieces.  I rediscovered a rarely used ruler that simplified the matter greatly, and defined the finished size without my agonizing over it.

Fabric selection was challenging.  I didn’t want to go shopping, but I also didn’t want to ruin the quilt with the wrong fabrics.

The diamonds were thoroughly soaked before sewing.  I’m grateful I did so, as both bled a little, and I will hopefully keep the quilt lovely and stark by careful soaking before hand.

When it came time to quilt, I was again briefly paralyzed.  This quilt is bulky in the corners and at the cubes.  On each step, this quilt has made demands, but not until I’ve worried about what to do.  Finally, I quilted the curves of the white and black in opposite directions, and in person it was very clear the curves had to be quilted in both directions.  Quilting in both black and white, while perhaps more quilting than necessary, added another layer to the optical illusion on the back.

When it came to binding, I originally planned on black.  When laying the quilt over the backing (pink and blue like the cubes), it became wildly obvious that a blue and pink binding added much more to the quilt than a black binding.  That necessitated carefully piecing the binding at the halfway point on each side.  I was perhaps not 100% spot on, but the results are quite satisfactory.

I’m thrilled that it’s finished.  I’m thrilled that I didn’t “ruin it” at any stage.  It currently lives clipped to my curtains so I can enjoy it; I have no plans for it beyond the making.  After churning out this quilt in less than a week from pulling the fabrics to the last stitches in the binding, I’m ready for a slower paced quilt.

from the room of Zana’s Ninis,

katie z.