Rail Fence Explosion

As part of my quilting practice, I picked up a rail fence kit from Craftsy in a rainbow of ombre fabrics.  My son said he really liked the pattern, so I planned to make it for him for Christmas.  The top was pieced during the summer and stored away for a while.

Time intervened and I started working on a "more" modern quilt taking inspiration from a Joe Cunningham process I saw.  It is a rail fence with variable length, 2 color center rails.  I wanted to use it for the back of the ombre top, so I picked two colors I liked from the front, grey and chartreuse, and started cutting and piecing.  And cutting and piecing.  And getting more grey fabric till it was big enough.  

I liked it, but wanted the design to engage the edge, so I lost the grey border and made more rail blocks.  Then I started moving the blocks around and liked the bigger blobs of green.  Then I grouped them into a big blob that was exploding.  That helped me finalize a quilting design to mimic the explosion.  It would even work on the other side too!

I added some big stitch hand quilting to the central explosion because that was actually easier than jamming and rotating thru my domestic machine.

The machine worked fine for the straight rays using a walking foot, but the initial explosion starburst was very tedious to sew around all the basting pins.  I started out marking the lines, but the marks were not durable enough so I made my own Hera marker as an experiment.  It worked awesome and will remain my favorite marking tool.  I will do a tutorial.....  I got the binding finished on Christmas eve, and the project was a surprise.  Harrison knew I was making the grey/green quilt, but didn't realize I was making it as the backing for his quilt.  I was doing the quilting while he was at school, and carefully put it away before he got home each day.  He got my first reversible 2 for 1 quilt.

This quilt has a spectacular effect if you hold it up in front of a bright window, it looks like stained glass.  The ombre colors shine through the green blocks and the seam allowances look like the lead portions.  I will try to capture a picture of that.