Summer quilt

We took the finished quilt out for a spin this weekend.

The front is assembled from the Summersville Leaf collection, the back is a green gingham, and the binding is a very sunny citron. 

Making this quilt was a lot of fun.  Because it was for me, I felt free to take my time and experimented a bit along the way.  This led to some good moments -- such as when I finally conquered making mitered corners with quilt binding! -- and to some funny moments, in which it became clear that I do not have a future as a quilt designer (as if that were ever in question).  My original plan had been to do the whole quilt as a simple patchwork of squares.  But I so loved the print of the streetscape of rowhouses that I wanted to show it off.

No big deal, I thought.  I'll cut that print in horizontal rectangles, and everything else in squares.  Happily, it did not take me long to realize that this plan was not as simple as it seems.  You can't cut the squares to mirror the dimensions of the rectangle -- they have to be a little bigger, because they'll be joined and need a seam allowance.  (For example, if your rectangle is 11 inches wide, then instead of two 5.5 inch squares, you need two 6 inch squares to provide a half-inch of seem allowance).  Okay, not too hard. 

Then came laying out the pattern.  I now had a combination of squares and rectangles that I needed to use most efficiently to make the largest possible quilt area.  And, of course, I wanted to get a mix of print sizes, so that one part of the quilt was not dominated by the big geometric prints and another by small-scale prints.  It started to feel like one big GRE logic problem (fabric A can join with fabrics C & D on any side, but can only join with fabric B vertically.  fabric D goes with fabric A &  B, but shouldn't directly adjoin fabric C.)  Agh!   

Suffice it to say that I was wishing I had just followed a pattern and not tried to make things up as I went along.  Lesson learned.

In any case, I am very happy with the way it came out.

And I am looking forward to enjoying the rest of the summer with my new quilt.  Hopefully, we have plenty of picnics in our future.

Comments

[Brigid]

Beautiful job--I absolutely love the gingham and yellow binding!