Saturday, November 28, 2015

Peace: A Finished Quilt

When life gives you lemons, make a quilt.


The family member I made this quilt for received it in the mail today as a surprise. Giving a quilt to someone who appreciates and loves it is one of the best feelings. :)

In progress: basting. At this point I finally knew what the quilt looked like all together!

I used her favorite color of all: green. I started out by staring at Lizzy House's butterfly print (Butterfly Box in Green), and since it has ALL THE GREENS, it became the focal print.


 I sewed strips around each square in a log-cabin-like fashion, often piecing scraps together as I went. This kind of sewing is mindless, freeing, and fun - what I love to do! Then, I added strips as needed to make the butterfly prints lay in a circle  and make the blocks equal sizes in their rows. There was very little measuring - mostly eye-balling. Again, how I best love to work.


This is my favorite block - the teals. The cranes! Those moons! I must really love the quilt recipient!


To bring forth the circle motif, I decided to quilt a circle in the middle and intersect other circles from each block. When I first started quilting, I didn't know if I was going to continue the large circle or make the smaller ones. I'm glad I went with the latter; it was much easier to quilt! Thanks to the Periscope community for helping with that decision. :)

I quilted using my free motion foot only. While many (including myself in the past) use only their walking foot for this motif, I have more control and turn less with my FMQ foot. See more about this on my Spiral Quilting Tutorial.


I backed the quilt in a fabric I know she loves (by Valori Wells), surrounded by two panels by Juliana Horner. You can see the quilt label peeking out there. Instead of piecing the label into my backing (which can be a huge pain) or sewing it on afterwards, I appliqued it onto the backing before I quilted. It was easy and it still got quilted over. Score!






Whenever I make a quilt for someone specifically, it makes me think about them all the time. I hope the thoughts are felt!
This is the first of two quilts (at least, at the moment) that I'm giving this holiday season. 

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You can read and see more about this quilt here and here.

Linking up to Fabric Tuesday @ Quilt Story.

18 comments:

  1. I like how the Butterfly print pulls in all the colors and coordinates across the quilt in the same way the spirals ripple out and interconnect the quilt. Lovely! I am sure the recipient can feel your love through it.

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  2. Pretty and the quilting is the perfect touch!

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  3. She is going to feel so wrapped in your love whenever she is under this beauty~

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  4. Such a lovely gift! The fabric you chose are so great together, and we all know there are some extra special ones you'd one use for someone special :-)

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  5. I love what you ave done to bring out the butterfly fabric, the colours and circular quilting are just wonderful. Someone is very lucky. x

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  6. Very pretty.. and I love your quilting pattern you chose. You MUST really love the recipient. This one would be hard to give up.

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  7. Love this!!! Very "you" too. :D I do nearly everything with my FMQ foot now... well, except piecing. :D

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  8. Yikes. This quilt is soooo wonderful.
    Is it for ME?
    lol just kidding. But not in the matter of the beauty that this quilt expresses.
    I love it!

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  9. Love this color scheme. I have started a new quilt with the same colors:)

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  10. Such a lovely quilt and the quilting is perfect for it. This makes me think that maybe i could do improv, i've always thought i couldn't

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  11. Such a lovely quilt and the quilting is perfect for it. This makes me think that maybe i could do improv, i've always thought i couldn't

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  12. It's a beautiful quilt. I might be inspired to try more improv myself, with a focus print like this to start it off.

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  13. I love this so much! I think the blocks are gorgeous. So many design possibilities.

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  14. So great! What a fun use of the butterflies and I love the quilting!

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  15. I'm so glad that your recipient loves her quilt, it's beautiful. I love the whole color scheme, but I think the teal blocks are my fav too :) I'm definitely going to steal that quilting motif for a scrap quilt I need to finish up.

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Let's start a conversation! I love comments and I'd be happy to reply to all who have an email address accessible. Thanks for commenting!

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