Quilt #4

I made a queen-sized quilt for Hamish a little over a year ago. It was my fourth quilting project and my most ambitious one to date. Before that I had made two stacked strip quilts with improvised, wedge-shaped strips that turned out fine, but were really more learning experience than artistic success. The third was a log cabin quilt for my mom. I drew the mauve and aqua color palette from her throw pillows and quilted timidly in the seams (stitched in the ditch). Although the pattern, colors and quilting were pretty conservative I was happy with the result.

But conservative wouldn't work this time. Hamish wasn't sure what he wanted, but he didn't want the quilt to look like a collection of 12" square blocks. Of all the photos I showed him he reacted most enthusiastically to Boo Davis's "Rock Out" quilt (100% amazing and possibly nsfw). And maybe an angel. And definitely no pixelated images.

Well, two out of three isn't bad.

I started with Boo's all-square one-patch pattern and envisioned the crosses with a gradient from all browns at the bottom to all blues at the top. But it needed something more. Yes, it definitely needed a pixelated tree. I started playing with a tree shape over a graduated Photoshop background.

I scanned the fabrics and created the layout in InDesign.

Then I cut out a whole lot of 2" and 3-1/2" squares (with 1/4" seam allowances the finished square sizes are 1-1/2" and 3"). While sewing I went back and forth between loving and hating the design. I really wasn't confident I was going to like the result, even when I was almost done piecing the squares together. For the quilting I took my first stab at free-motion work, sewing a curvy zig zag. When I finished the binding I was pleased with the result. And more importantly Hamish loves it.

The angel lives on the back.