FITF: solid friendship quilt top

I always feel I have to explain my quilt names, which I suppose means they’re not really named as well as they might be. I’m stumped each and every time, and nearly every time I show Morgan a photo and ask his opinion. Unfortunately he’s usually as stumped as I am (maybe more stumped? Next time I’ll list his suggestions and then you’ll see!). After asking him about this one, I pointed out that it was reminding me of a friendship bracelet, and a quick google image search told me I was right. The fabrics are Alissa Haight Carlton’s Modern Solids, so ‘solid friendship’ it is.

But I’m getting ahead of myself! You may have seen that Alissa designed a line of solids called Modern Solids II – they’re crossweaves (warp and weft threads are two different colors which come together to make the color you see), and as such have a beautiful depth that other solids don’t have. She was so nice to send me a fat quarter bundle ages ago, and while I wanted to immediately sew with them, well, you know how things go. A while back I drew up a little design while coloring with Max (oh man – it was 4 months ago!), but then it was set aside again. After I finished my Liberty Jubilee quilt, I was inspired to pull this one back out, since it also used half rectangle triangles.

I drew out the design multiple times, using colored pencils to kind of give me a guide for the colors, and from there it was pretty easy to determine how many I needed of each color. Half rectangle triangles are not quite as easy as half square triangles, but I love the look (I talked a bit about making half rectangle triangles in this tutorial). A Bloc Loc ruler seems as though it would make this process easier, but I don’t have one, so this time around I attempted to paper piece it. It mostly worked, though please don’t look closely, because there are definitely a lot of points that don’t line up! Luckily it’s not that noticeable from a distance, so overall I’m still pleased!