Habitat J quilt

At the June meeting of the East Bay Modern Quilt guild we received fabric for a new quilt challenge. Free Spirit generously gave us each several fat quarters from the Earth colorway of Jay McCarroll's Habitat fabric line. The only rule was that we could add our own solid fabrics, but non-Habitat prints were verboten.

On his blog the other day Jay encouraged craven flattery (not his term), so I took that and ran with it. The result is my J quilt.

I was struck by two things in the fabric line. First, there is a crazy mix of colors. I latched onto the contrast between the pastels and more saturated colors, evident especially in the floral dot. Secondly I was surprised by how the most angular print in the collection seemed the most organic, reminding me most vividly of living plants, palm fronds and leaf veins. 

I chose my solid colors from the floral dot print. The pastel background colors became the stripes of the J. I cut solids matching the saturated dots into fractured blocks with the Habitat prints.

The quilt is pieced in three sections: the two improvised block sections and the precise stripes. Measuring, cutting and pinning those curves was nerve wracking, but it all came out right.

I quilted with a few straight lines in royal and white on the J, then a loopy triangle meander for the rest of the quilt. I like the loopy triangles with the fractured patchwork, and especially that angular print.

I pieced the back from various solid scraps, and the tiny bit of extra fractured patchwork from the top. If you squint you can see another J. The binding is more scrappy solids. The quilt is 60" x 74" unwashed.

Update:
The Habitat J quilt was featured on Modern Day Quilts. Thanks Heather!

Update 2: This baby finally got a name: "In One Way"