"Graduated Coins"- UP Greens top #13 finished
This top is a variation of coin quilts I’ve done before. I’ve made two other coin quilts that I can think of right off my head. Here are pictures of them.
I wanted to do something a bit different, but after all, they are coins…so they have a certain look to them that you can’t get around. These “coins” are all made up of 2.5”x6.5” strips. I cut up pieces for this one as I worked on the last one or two quilts - making a pile of these pieces over the course of a week.
Oh wait…so why is it called a ‘coin’ anyway? Aren’t coins round?
Hmm. I did a quick search and I found this information on quilting board by someone named ‘mythreesuns’. Assuming this person knew what he/she is talking about and not just spouting off the top of the head - here’s what was said.
”the chinese coin quilt has been around for a long time!
according to Barbara Brackman's book Encyclopedia of pieced blocks
the earliest example is 1850
there are a few variations of the block ...thus the different names!
ie roman square when every fourth block is dark,
chinese coins the blocks are actually different sizes;
bars when the blocks are all the same size and the veritcal rows in between are the same size...
etc
hope this helps!
think today we classify all of these quilts as chinese coins.”
taken from https://www.quiltingboard.com/main-f1/coin-quilts-t114406.html
I know it is dangerous to take what is written “on the internet” as gospel truth, to use that expression, but it certainly sounds reasonable to me. Good enough that I’m sharing it with you anyway. if I learn something different, I’ll fix my post.
Once I had cut 500 2.5”x6.5'“ strips, I could start.
I ended up giving this quilt away to a young lady who came to my house to pick up something she was going to use with working with kids. She admired the quilt as it as hanging on the line, so I did something radical and I just gave it to her! She was shocked!
Then I began to put it together. It’s a pretty basic quilt. I got the idea of doing this from thinking about my graduated looking piano border I made last year on my 2.5” quilt “Light ‘n Dark”. That is shown on the right.
I thought that maybe I could do the same thing, but with a bunch of them, and alternate rows, so the light and darks were upside down. This would give your eyes somewhere to go.
So that’s what I did. Obviously if a person were working with actual fabric from one’s stash instead of clothing or curtains that are less than inspiring - it might be easier to make it look super cool. But once I got it together and a photo taken, I was very pleased.
I’m eager to go ahead and quilt this one - as all that bumpiness bothers me - but in real life, it isn’t that bad. I did cut 100.5” white strips and then matched centers and pinned before sewing it on to the coins sections. I think it will be fine once I quilt it.
I did the best I could with the pieces I cut.
I had been dreading it as I was working on it.
I thought it was going to be a big flop!
Once again - this quilt is very simple. Anyone could do it. The hardest part of this is, naturally, is putting your strips in order from light to dark.
I’ve done it a few times when making bargellos. However, I decided with this, that, like when I made the Light ‘n Dark quilt from 2.5” strips, that I wasn’t going to stress out over perfection. When you make a bargello, you carefully choose your fabrics and can do the graduated choices and keep choosing until perfection happens.
When I made these rows with the fabrics I had here, I had many blenders, solids and prints —and oh, yes, plaids! It was difficult to actual put them in order of light to dark when you have so many pieces with varying colors and patterns in each piece.
So, I decided to just go for “effect”. Forgive me, please if you see areas where I didn’t actually get them in the correct order. I decided to let that be part of the charm of this quilt. Remember, I was going for an “overall effect” of graduating shades from light to dark or dark to light, depending on how you are looking at the quilt.
The first couple of rows I put them all in order on the table and then took photos, brought those photos to my computer turned them into black and white photos to check for lightness and darkness. After that I just “winged” it. I wasn’t going to do that multiple times for each row.
Just so you can see up close what I’m working with. Here are many of the fabrics. Hmm. Now you can better understand the challenge! Simple blenders or even tone on tones would definitely be easier to work with than plaids and stripes and polka dots!
So what do I think? I like it! I was surprised at the end result, even though this is what I drew up in EQ.
I drew it up in EQ first and then began to cut strips. I really just used what I had. Obviously it isn’t as bright as the EQ program’s preview. That’s simply because those the colors I used. I didn’t go back and readjust the drawing to match what I did.
I will say that I tried to cut a variety of lights, mediums and darks into these strips, but I really didn’t know where I stood until I cut all 500 and then divvied them into stacks of light/med/dark strips. I then made 10 stacks which each held all shades. They would later be organized in a row by shade - starting with the lightest, going to the darkest, as best as I could. I took pictures along the way and I will explain it more completely in the pattern I will write.
So there you - possibly the most simple quilt one can make on earth - a plain “Coins” quilt. It’s right up with a basic rail fence as to a noncomplex quilt.
And as a review of where we are in this series - let’s go back again.
The UP Greens Series from the beginning.
I’m hoping this series, along with helping ME clean out these greens and whittle them down to a reasonable amount - will help inspire you with do-able realistic patterns/quilts to help you use up possibly uninspiring or even, shall I say, fabrics you dislike. On a personal level, I’m trying to make them different from each other!
Thanks for coming along on my journey!
Have a great day wherever you are reading this! Stay safe!
Here’s one of the beauties we have!