Wild Blue Wilderness (Quilt)

Another baby on the way, another finished quilt to share with you!

I made this quilt for Ryan's cousin, Jenny.  She's having a baby girl at the end of the month and I'm so excited that someone else in the Muprhy/McGrath family is joining the baby train.  Sadly, Jenny and Jack live in Nashville so Abby won't get to hang out with her new cousin as much as we'd like....but I'm so excited to have another baby in the family to shower with love.

I think the back of this quilt is actually my favorite part.  Isn't that fabric cool?  There's a close-up a little farther down, so keep scrolling.

I used a pattern called Square City and this quilt went together really fast once I got the fabric cut.  The pattern is out of a  book I bought called "Weekend Quilts".  The idea of making an entire quilt in just one weekend is blasphemy.  I mean, if you had the fabric cut, and counted making the TOP of the quilt as being done, then sure.  But the whole process takes some time.  I started this one back in January and finished it up just in time for her shower last weekend.  Weekend my A....well, you know what.  :O)

When I talked with Jenny back at Christmas they still didn't know if they were having a boy or a girl and she told me she really wanted lots of gender neutral items.  I was excited because I'd fallen for this fabric long before talking with her so I took the opportunity to work in something other than pink for their little girl.  

The fabric is from the Indian Summer line by Sarah Watson (Spirit Lake palette).  My go-to fabric store is called Stash Modern Fabric on Etsy.  I LOVE the bundles they put together.  They often take their bundles to the next level by incorporating fabrics from a few lines/designers into one bundle making your quilts look great and pop!  If I'm being honest, I'd tell you that I just ordered another package of fabric from them yesterday.  I'm sensing a "problem" here!!

I'm so happy with the binding I picked for this quilt.  It's called Darts Nior and is from the Minimalista collection.  I think it is the prefect finishing touch.  In the picture above you can see I added a little accent of 3 inch squares to the back of the quilt to help break up the busy pattern....and to hide the seam (shhhh!  Don't tell anyone!  I need someone to teach my how to match up the pattern when seaming....anyone?  anyone??  I'd love a tutorial!).

I did the actual quilting on this one much less dense then I did in my last quilt.  And, I choose a thread that matched very closely.  I'm still experimenting with what I like best and I think if I had to do over again I'd pick a thread that would really pop instead but I sort of like the tone on tone look for this quilt and how it lets the fabric pop instead of taking over.

The large squares got a heart balloon detail in them (which you can see surprisingly well in the above picture) and the smaller squares got a curly flower and leaf (see below).  This type of quilting was much harder than the free motion loops I did in my Pink Raccoons quilt so I was definitely tackling something new when I tried my  hand at an actual design.  The light colored thread helped to hide my mistakes which calmed my nerves while I was working on it.  But, after doing a few of them you sort of get into the groove and they go pretty fast!