New Quilt-Grateful

My blogging catch up continues!  Last week I blogged about my two ice quilts which I actuall made and finished this summer/early fall.  More recently I decided I wanted to try to make a piece for the SAQA call for entry called Minimalism.  I'm not exactly a minimalist but I'd had this idea for a white quilt with intertwined rainbow ribbons in my brain for a while and it seemed like the time to try it.  I'd never really been sure how I'd make it, whether I'd piece or applique something, but I decided after doing this yarn-covered Alleluia Alleluia piece earlier in the year that I would do it using couched yarn. 

I started with a blue fabric/batting sandwich and first couched down all the rainbow ribbons using stash yarn.  

My goal had been to use all stash stuff for this project, but I decided that I should have one color of white yarn for the background and since the quilt is fairly big, I did buy a new skein of inexpensive white acrylic yarn.  I started filling in the background- you can see below that I just sort of meandered around couching down the white yarn until the entire piece was covered.  

There are letters in the white yarn, it says "I will be grateful for today."  In the picture below you can see the word today at the end, but the words are very subtle and hidden in the final piece because they're couched in the same color as the rest of the background.  I think it's a good mantra, although I'm not always that good at remembering it.

This happy guy joined me for one of my marathon saturday quilting/couching sessions!

After finishing the white couching, I went back and put down another layer over many of the colored ribbons since some of them had gotten a bit over-run by the white and were receding into the background.

It was a hard quilt to photograph with all that white, but here are a few detail shots of the final thing.  I enjoyed using different colors of top thread to couch down the white yarn so there are some subtle variations in color across the background. 

It took quite a while to fill in the entire quilt with courched yarn, but I find quilting to be very calming and meditative, and I enjoyed the process a lot.  I love the texture that comes from the yarn!

Here's the final piece, it's 48" wide x 31" high.  I have no idea whether it will get into the show, but I'm pleased with it and very much enjoyed the process.