This quilt started out with a pattern called "Carpenter's Color Wheel". I liked the pattern, but it was for a wall-hanging and I wanted a lap quilt. So with the help of the "Electric Quilt" software, and my husband's amazing ability to find my mistakes I enlarged the original design and altered it just enough to make it work for my purposes. The finished quilt is about 80 inches square and backed with flannel to make it a very warm lap quilt for next winter. It is quilted with monofilament thread on top and cotton thread underneath, so the quilting would not distract from the colors and design of the top, but the back would still be comfortable and not "pokey". The top was pieced in February and quilted in June (note to self - do NOT quilt a flannel quilt again in June!).
When I went to pin the layers of this quilt together it was a fairly nice day, partly cloudy and not too terribly hot. So I went out in the front driveway (the only flat place I have that is big enough to lay out quilts) and laid out the backing and taped it down to the driveway. Then I spread out the batting got it centered and straight and taped it down on top. Finally I spread out the top over the other layers, centered and straightened it and realized that the backing was about 18 inches short on one side! Now I had measured both the top and the backing twice and thought I should have had at least a couple of inches extra all the way around, not optimal, but I figured I could work with it. Once I realized I had apparently mis-measured I already had the backing and the batting taped down and really didn't want to start over from scratch. So I figured out how to make it work for me. If I moved the top so that two sides had two-to-three inches of backing beyond the edge of the top there would be an extra 22 inches along one end, so after quilting the rest of the quilt I could cut that extra off and attach it to the side that was short, then complete the quilting along that side. So I lined it up and began pinning the layers together with safety pins. After about the 5th pin it started raining! Thinking that this would be a light, short lived Spring shower I just kept pinning as fast as I could. Of course it starts raining harder! By the time I had a dozen or so pins left to go it finally stopped. The sun came out and dried it enough by the time I was done so I was able to bring it in and start quilting without having to hang it up to dry.
As I was removing the tape that held the layers in place My 7-year-old came outside and said that the quilt looked like an explosion of color. This is how the "Color Ka-Boom!" name was born.
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