Remember the first time you went in to a quilt shop to "pull" a quilt? I suspect most of us go in with one idea and come out with a completely different palette.
That is the case with this quilt top. My-niece-the-athlete asked me to make her a batik quilt. Seems easy enough to say yes to that. But I had a few stipulations, knowing this young woman as I do. SHE had to pick the fabrics. SHE had to pick the pattern. SHE had to lay out the blocks when they were done. And, SHE will have to choose which quilting pattern SHE wants before this goes on the long arm during my next trip to Chicago. To say she is a woman with strong preferences would be a slight understatement (wouldn't it, doll, if you are reading this?).
Prior to starting the decision making process, she had been drawn to all the bright and geometric quilts I've made -- particularly those with white sashing and small blocks. She spent hours and hours looking at jelly rolls in batiks, various color palettes and slowly began to narrow down her preferences.
That's so easy until you walk into a quilt store with about 200-300 bolts of batiks and everything flies out the window. I had taken Cozy Modern Quilts by Kim Schaeffer since we obviously needed to know what the pattern was before we could go any farther. Her book has a lot of very geometric and striking designs and the minute my-niece-the-athlete saw this pattern, one decision was made.
Now the fabric. That process took a little longer -- like hours longer. She pulled bolts, we looked at bolts, we added, we took away, we closed our eyes, we opened our eyes, we added more, we took away more, we talked to other quilters in the store and ultimately -- SHE decided on the fabrics and the sashing. And we were done. At least with that part.
She did a fabulous job. I went into the store thinking I was going to be working on a "knock-your-eyes-out" bright quilt. I left the store with beautiful, soft, calming fabrics that have created a very different feel when they have all been put together.
There is a LOT of sewing in this quilt. The 90 blocks each have 21 pieces in them (sashing finishes at 1") and then I sashed the left side and top on each block as I went. I did not want to trust getting all those little 1" square sashing blocks out of alignment for my geometric girl! It worked and the blocks pretty much lined up with minimal "scootching" required.
While I love this book and am about to start a new quilt from it out of my beautiful pink FQ bundle from my-niece-the-quilter -- I urge you to read it carefully and work out the pattern in your head. I've fussed a bit before that the quilts are all reduced to minimal steps and without caution, you can over cut. I actually was able to do a little bit of strip piecing on this quilt by thinking it through and speeding up the process just a tad. In the end, this quilt is 7.5' x 7.5'. It's not a small quilt and mis-cutting batiks would have made me very very very unhappy. As it was, my waste has been minimal.
I hope you have someone in your life that loves your quilting and wants to share in it in some way!
Jan
