Jewel Box quilt top together!

Well, I can't believe it, but I've finally finished the top to my Jewel Box quilt. I'm debating on adding a one-inch border of that navy blue, or I may just save that matching navy fabric and do a binding with it instead.

I went to a quilt retreat this weekend, and after making some fold-and-roll totebags, I worked on this Jewel Box. I've had it two-thirds done since July of 2008.


It's king sized - 108 inches square, to fit my waterbed. There are more than 3700 pieces in it, squares and triangles. I don't know how many fabrics there are, but a LOT. :D All the navy blue is the same, but there are about 6 different tone-on-tones for the white. Countless different fabrics in the bright squares and triangles. There are some duplicates, but not too many!

You're never quite sure if what you draw in EQ will look the same when it's translated to fabric, but I think this time, it's very close. Here's the original design I did on EQ of what I wanted it to look like:



Back in May of 2008, all those little squares looked like this. If you're interested in how I went from the EQ design to construction of the quilt, here's my instructions, with graphics. For those of you who like to count, there's 2592 squares in this quilt, 1160 triangles, 36 rectangles (in blue, to piece the border) for a grand total of 3788 pieces.

Tomato crop in early June

My tomato crop as of today. The bigger ones are all early girl, then there's five round cherry tomatoes, and the oblong ones are grape tomatoes. I've had more cherry tomatoes than this, but I had a salad last night, and 4 of them plus 2 grape tomatoes went down the hatch. That really ripe early girl on the bottom right is destined for my lunch sandwich tomorrow.


I've been picking them when orange instead of red so the birds don't get any ideas, but they ripen up quickly in the bowl here if I don't refrigerate them.