PQ 10:1 The Light at the End of the Tunnel

Getting back into the swing of sewing for fun and quilting has been a bit more challenging than I thought it would be.  As soon as I heard the challenge for this week I knew exactly what I wanted to do.  However, it was clear I did not have the right fabrics to make it happen.  My personal challenge for this season of Project Quilting is 'use what you have'.  That meant I had to go with a second choice.  I wanted to to something that looked like the light at the end of the tunnel.   I decided I could do it by using up lots of ugly, irritating scraps and make a chenille quilt.

How is the light at the end of the tunnel hopeful?  Because I always hope it is the end of the tunnel and not a train!

The chenille quilt is a quilt sandwich made up of layers of scrap fabric between two pieces of fabric.  I've always (OK both times) used black fabric as the outside to provide lots of contrast.  Once you sandwich and pin you stitch rows of stitching to make channels.  For this project I tried to sketch out the bare bones of a tunnel.  Then you carefully cut through all of the layers, without cutting the backing.  As the fabric shreds and frays the colors come through.  It amazes me that I can use such wildly disparate fabrics with some really strong patterns and they still blend in as a color.

I wasn't able to get a good picture of the whole thing.  It measures just about 18 inches on a side.  You can kind of get the idea of the tunnel from this.  Ideally the side channels would have been curved but I knew it was going to be challenging enough to slash the center bits without adding more curves.  Plus, cutting on a curve equals cutting on the bias equals less fraying of the fabric.  That was not the best plan.  There may have been a few extra aggravated slashes here and there.
 

I finished everything but the binding a few days ago.  Since then we, the quilt and I, have been having a conversation about the binding.  
Quilt, "I want a rainbow colored blanket stitch with really pretty hand spun rainbow perle cotton."   Me.  "No."
Quilt.  "Rainbow."
Me.  "How about a nice solid black binding machine stitched on the front?
Quilt.  "No,  Rainbow, but not lots of rainbow.  Hand stitched rainbow."
Me.  "That would be lovely."
Quilt.  "YES.  Now go get the thread."
Me.  "Have you looked outside lately?  There is over a foot of snow on the ground and all the stores are closed."
Quilt.  "That isn't my fault.  I'll wait."
Me.  "The deadline is tomorrow."
Quilt.  "So."
Me.  "How about a lovely black thread zig zag so you are fully finished and we can maybe talk about more embellishments in the future?"
Quilt.  "It is a bit raggedy around here and I if you put me down, I'll end up in the WIP pile over there so OK.  But I still want rainbows!"
Me.  "We'll talk again." (*after I finish the rest of that pile.)

Made for Project Quilting season 10.