I designed this baby quilt for a woodland nursery with tints of green and teal. This spring leaf pile is just starting to get dispersed by the wind. At least, that was my design inspiration. I also wanted the half-square triangles (HSTs) to begin to ‘melt’ as they got farther from the center of the pile–almost like new grass coming up through the snow.
Piecing was an ongoing puzzle, especially for the outside sections. I was constantly referring to my graph paper.
This design gave me a lot of negative space to play with in the quilting–daunting and fun. I printed several practice sheets to doodle on before experimenting on the plexiglass.
After doing mostly longarm work (thanks to my wonderful neighbor), I’ve been needing to learn how to free motion quilt on my domestic machine (a Bernina Aurora 440 QE). I was worried I’d get frustrated with moving the bulk of the quilt around and being able to stitch only a small space at a time. However, this baby quilt wasn’t bad at all. I used a walking foot to quilt the long wood-grain type design, and the BSR foot for the swirls (my attempt at McTavishing).
I used the alphabet stitch to create a label on the binding. I’m curious how it will hold up. If it does, I’ll keep signing my quilts that way because it’s way easier than sewing a tag on the back.
Lessons Learned
I think I may have gotten a knock-off Kona Cotton by ordering it on Amazon. My local quilt shops didn’t have the color I wanted, so I ordered online from Zen Creative Designs (through Amazon) for the silver Kona cotton. The batik greens and teals I bought from Lyons Quilting shop (which I love!). The Kona cotton, however, seemed super thin and flimsy compared to Kona I’ve bought before. Anyone have thoughts on this?
Backcountry Quilts 