At the suggestion of Linda, and since I seem to be at a loss for blog post ideas lately, I’m going to spend the next few weeks taking you on a tour of some of the quilts that I finished off in 2020. I figure I might as well start with the quilt from last week, as I already have a photo of it, and it’s the quilt that sparked the discussion.

The inspiration for this quilt was on the cover of Sewing With Nancy (a sewing company on line) designed by Lori Holt of Bee in My Bonnet. I love Lori’s eye for fresh, vintage inspired colors and patterns and the quilt was just so very cheerful. It showed up in early 2019, and I knew that with building the farm house and a move in my future, having a hand work project would serve me well as I was packing and unpacking the sewing room. I ordered the kit which included the pattern, the circle templates and the stack of colorful fat quarters of Lori’s fabric.

Much to my surprise when I got the pattern, the quilt was actually circles appliqué down on 108’ wide quilt back fabric. I had to laugh. My mental image of a very portable hand work project went right out the window at the though of hauling the whole queen size top everywhere with me. I was also rather skeptical about my ability to mark and sew the circles in a very regular pattern on such a large piece of fabric. To further complicate things, I couldn’t find a piece of 108” wide fabric that I liked.

I did some quick math and took a look at my stash of neutral fat quarters and decided that I would make the background very scrappy squares. That solved all my problems: the portability, getting fabric I liked, plus the quilt would have an extra dimension of shading to the background that I thought I would like. I started cutting 6” squares and got stuck in making my circles.

The project did indeed carry me through the move, I got the circles all finished up at the beginning of 2020, and pieced the quilt top early in the pandemic lockdown. I was more in love with it each time I looked at it. I think part of what I like too is there is a hint of the game Twister from when I was a kid. Vintage all around in so many ways. I quilted it with an all over Baptist Fan pattern as I did not want the quilting to take away from the visual impact of the circles on the quilt top.

When cutting out the circles, I realized that if I cut them very carefully, pushed to the edge of the fat quarter, I could then get a 2.5” strip off of the side of every fat quarter in the kit. When it came to binding I figured a scrappy quilt would be happy with a scrappy binding, so I used those strips to piece a very scrappy binding that echoed all the wonderful colors from the circles. It seemed to be the perfect finishing touch to the quilt.

This month is the first time I’ve had it on my bed. It’s a bit small to actually use as a blanket for me, I tend to cocoon myself in my covers and there’s not enough drop on the sides for my taste, so I put this one over my sleeping quilts so I still get to enjoy it on my bed. It’s very fresh and modern and just the thing for dreary winter days.

If you are still reading, I hope you enjoyed the overview. Next week I will take a closer look at a quilt that was the result of a block swap with friends. Happy Quilting in the mean time!