I pieced this quilt quite a long time ago, then got busy with other obligations and didn’t finish piecing the backing so it has been sitting in a bin awaiting its turn for quilting for quite a while. I still need to sew 4″ strips around the edges of the pieced border of the backing to make the backing big enough for long arm quilting.
With this quilt I played with the notion of using a busier background fabric. I chose the white background with lots of brightly colored floral designs that remind me a little of the old Spirograph and the designs you could make with it. I paired the background fabric with solid fabrics or solid reading fabrics in colors from the floral designs. The result is a fairly busy quilt. It feels like the background fights the foreground for attention a bit. If I were to make the quilt again, I would probably save the busy background for a tamer block pattern, or at least one with fewer pieces. That said, it’s a pretty quilt. It’s bright and cheerful and will probably delight a teenage girl.
The quilt is earmarked for Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The quilts (and other items) made for Pine Ridge are distributed through the Sew For Kids Volunteers, a Facebook group made up of very nice people who sew, quilt, crochet, and buy things for the children and elders of Pine Ridge and those living in that general area.
Now that the top is put together and the backing is very nearly finished being pieced, it’s time to think about the batting and the quilting thread. I tend to go with a nice 80/20 cotton/poly mix batting because I like the feel and drape of that batting when it’s quilted. It’s also warm. Ordinarily, I like working with variegated quilting thread, but I think this quilt is already busy enough and variegated quilting thread would add to the busyness. I think for this quilt I’ll go with something more sedate like a plain, calm, white which will fade in somewhat with the background, and perhaps be perceived as more neutral in other areas of the quilt that are bright colors.
Linking up this time with Handmade Monday, Small Quilts and Doll Quilts, and Monday Musings.
I love the “wild” colors in this quilt!! Thanks for linking up with Monday Musings, Laurie! Looking forward to seeing this one quilted!
Thank you Brenda! I like the wild colors too. I make a lot of charity quilts so kids and gravitate toward bright cheerful fabrics a lot of the time. I’m looking forward to getting this one quilted too. I enjoyed stopping by Monday Musings and checking out everyone’s projects. There were a lot of pretty ones.
Laurie
It’s a fun quilt and will definitely appeal to a teen girl. That is a great charity to give quilts too. I tend to make easy quilts for donations. I let the fabric do the talking, (so to speak.) I like the same type of batting — I actually buy it by the roll but it takes me about 2 years to use it up!
Thanks for stopping by Bonnie. I’ve given to the people of Pine Ridge through the Sew For Kids Volunteers group for a long time. I also like the Sunshine Online Quilt Guild which donates children’s quilts to a few different causes. That group is on MeWe.
I mostly make charity quilts and gift quilts, so I make whatever speaks to me at a given time. I just finished writing a post about doing more designing in 2024 so we’ll see what speaks to me in the design space.
I’ve been away from quilting for a few years and haven’t quilted much. Now that I am quilting more I will probably think about buying batting by the roll. One never wants to run out of either fabric or batting. 😀
I do a lot of scrap quilts too. They look complicated but are really pretty simple–lots of small pieces – but easy to pick up when you only have a few minutes to quilt.
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