May ROYGBIV - Monkey May

My #focusthrutheprism challenge for May was, well, late.  I finished it in June.  I was totally okay with that as I did so much in May and might have overdone the quilting of the May piece.  Super dense matchbook quilting = a lot of time!

I elected to do monkey wrenches in a variety of sizes.  Designing the blocks to fit the 20" requirement was rather fun.  I then decided to make the middles variations on courthouse steps to keep the crazy quilt look going.

I am using the Cherrywood fabrics with a FQ set of grey prints.  Adding in grey scraps from the various other projects I have going plus prints in the color of the month.  For the red I did not want a lot of value variation - I kept in in the same basic medium dark to dark value with one exception in the red on white print.  I kept the greys in light to medium values with one dark grey.

Once I had the blocks done and then together I decided to do a dense matchbook style quilting everywhere except the wrench's of each block to allow them to 'pop' and be more cohesive in a dark grey thread.  IT TOOK FOREVER!  Or many many more hours than I was prepared for.

However, I do love this piece.  Its a little crazy, and a lot red.  By keeping the red value in a darker tone it keeps it a rich vibrant red while the grey tones it down a bit.  The texture created by the blocks and the quilting was hard to photograph, but I see it in person and I just love it.

This is also part of my Q2 finish along with On the Windy Side 2015.