I’m making a couple of quilts for my sister Sara. She wanted me to use this clean, modern line of fabrics by Michael Miller. Although they aren’t colors I seek out normally, I love them! They have been fun to work with. The fabric is a little heavier than I normally use in a baby quilt,it is more like decorator fabric. It softened up beautifully when it was washed, however and if this is a well used quilt, it will be that much more durable.
The patterns are large and I wanted to employ them in the best way possible. I started by planning it with this Six Squares pattern but we wanted to use four different colors and the six squares didn’t allow me to use all the fabrics. So then I designed another quilt using more and smaller squares, using this and this as my inspiration, but no matter how I worked the design the squares were just too small. So back to the drawing board, literally. I went back to the Six Squares design and reworked it with eight squares. It was just right.
I actually ended up making this quilt three times. I made it in a lap size so I could work out all the bugs. Then I made it in a baby size but didn’t notice the mistake with the orange square until it was already quilted and bound and I was taking pictures of it. Ugh!!
I don’t understand it. I looked at that quilt top for hours while I bound it. I went over it every inch of it cutting all the tiny threads. I held it up in a mirror after each block was sewn. I guess I stopped looking at the design as a whole and just focused on the smaller pieces, until it was too late.
Luckily I cut out two of everything so that I could make a second quilt and Voilà! Here is the finished product.
I’m really proud of it and can’t wait to mail it off.
What I learned?
Look at the pattern as a whole and not just the smaller pieces.
