Escape Artist Quilt

Here comes my big project from September!

A few months ago, my good friend Jessie who I hadn’t seen in over three years let me know she had some time off and was considering coming to Phoenix for a visit if I was interested.  Ummm…Yes!  Jessie and I both studied bioengineering together at Pitt, which blossomed into a great friendship, roommates, and later she was one of my bridesmaids.

Jessie is also a quilter so we decided that we wanted to choose a project for her 9-day visit. Although we definitely have different likes and dislikes when it comes to quilt patterns, we found one that we both LOVED:  Elizabeth Hartman’s Escape Artist.

I’ve been a long time fan of Elizabeth’s work but I hadn’t actually made something of hers.  I was so excited to start!

As always, I made a practice block using scrap fabrics to get a feel for the pattern. I think my “first pancake” turned out pretty nice and it helped me determine that open seams were a must for such a complicated block.

So Jessie and I got to brainstorming about our fabric selection.  We decided that we wanted to make two versions of the quilt so that we could both have one at the end of the week.  Plus, we really wanted to focus on purple in place of the lovely blues in Elizabeth’s original pattern.

Doubling the pattern showed us that we needed 11 yards of each the white and purple. Whoa. I don’t think I’ve ever bought that much fabric! I discussed the option of buying a whole bolt at a discounted rate with several different shops.  The Fat Quarter Shop was so incredibly kind and helpful and I was able to buy two 15 yard bolts from them for only $67 each (only about $4.50/yard).  What a steal!

Its just as a hard to open a bolt of fabric as it is to open a jelly roll.  No joke. First World Problems.

I re-lived my childhood a bit and listened to some good old Harry Potter while cutting up the fabrics prior to Jessie’s arrival.  Those stories never get old.

We were so excited to get started, that the first day she came in, we got right to work!  The pattern calls for LOTS of strip sets in black and white. With me stitching, and Jessie ironing every single seam open, we blew through all the strip sets in a matter of hours on Day 1. Teamwork at its finest!  We even got a few sections of the main blocks put together on Day 2.

Progress shot!  Sorry for the bad lighting – we were having way too much fun to stop and take good pictures.

On Day 3 we got all of the main black and white blocks done for both quilts. It took much longer than we anticipated to piece the sections together.  I’m not much of a pinner, but we decided that was the best course of action to line up all those seams! Worth it.

Day 4: Break from quilting to see the Grand Canyon in all is glory! (We snuck in a few hours of stitching in the evening)

Day 5: Sight-seeing around Phoenix AND we stitched up all the half and quarter blocks.  Feeling super productive!

Day 6: Obviously, we needed to fill that empty space with purply-goodness! Contrast blocks for the win.

We even got one of the quilt tops sashed and assembled. Yay!

We’re on a roll!  Day 7: Piecing two versions of this AMAZING backing.  Now do you see why we needed 11 yards of purple? We spent a solid half hour piecing that gray strip so that the pattern would repeat perfectly. If you can’t see the seam, we did a good job!

Day 8:  Assemble the second quilt top.  We hadn’t done that initially in case we ran out of time but with our super speedy quilting, we got everything accomplished. Don’t you just love them?? They’re almost identical, we just rearranged our accent purple stripes in the blocks based on our favorites from my stash.

Day 9: Send Jessie home with a finished quilt top and back!  We had such an amazing time together! We obviously quilted quite a bit, but we did get to see the Grand Canyon, sights and fun restaurants around Phoenix and lots of airplanes.  We even got to fly a simulator!

We think we spent about 35 hours stitching while she was here, so both quilt tops and backs took about 70 man-hours to make.  I stitched every single seam while Jessie was a master of the iron.  I can’t even explain to you how much ironing is required to press all of those seams open. Thank goodness she doesn’t mind pressing! We tag-teamed the pinning depending on who was caught up on their own job.  I’m going to miss sewing with a friend – it’s so much more fun and so much quicker.

Do you like stitching with a friend?  Let me know!