Venn Diagram baby quilt

I can't believe it's taken me so long to write about  this baby quilt. Thomas Knauer sent me some fabric to work with from his upcoming Savanna Bop collection with Andover Fabrics.

My first impulse, inspired by the orange and red animal print in the little circle at the bottom of my quilt, was to make columns of wonky log cabins framing fussy-cut critters. But then the multi-colored droplet prints caught my eye.

I've had the idea of a Venn Diagram quilt with intersecting circles rumbling around in my head for a while. I just hadn't quite figured out how to piece all those big shapes. Savanna Bop gave me the kick in the pants I needed.

The finished quilt is about 44" x 49". I quilted the thee circles with spirals, and the background with a grid of widely spaced double diagonal lines.

The wedge at the intersection of the two big circles is a tile print from the collection. (No, silly, that is not a 1/2" patchwork!)

The two large circles are a patchwork of coordinating giraffe and elephant prints.

I pieced the intersecting circles first.

Then I pieced the background from two green prints. I carefully laid the flopsy background on a flat surface, squared up the edges, and traced & cut the outline of the circles. I sewed the perimeter of the blue circle first, and then the two remaining edges of the yellow circle.

When I took the above photo, I noticed that the grid of the blue circle wasn't quite straight -- it's rotated a bit clockwise relative to the background grid. The idea of unpicking and resewing that long curved seam was very unappealing, and I wasn't even sure the second try would have better results, so I set the project aside. A couple days later I took a fresh look and realized that I would never be able to see past the error, so I set about fixing it. Indeed, it came out better the second time. I'm so glad I fixed it.

 I pieced the quilt back from extra four-patches from the big circles and three additional Savanna Bop half yards. Do you see the pink rhinos!?

I bound the Venn Diagram quilt with more droplets.

Savanna Bop will be in stores soon. I had a great time working with Thomas's designs. The colors are bright and soft, and they work together well in close coordinates as well as the full range. The fabric has a great hand. And did I mention pink rhinos?