Berry Season Gift Quilt

Mashe Modern Fabrics had a crazy good sale on charm packs in November and I snatched up four from the Robert Kaufman collection Berry Season.  I bought both prints and solids.  I have to admit I don't really love precuts because I don't really like to make a quilt out of one collection.  But the price at about $7 a piece was worth it and I ended up using them for this quilt that was a fun and easy sew that was fun because I hardly had to cut anything before I could get sewing at the machine.  

I used a Moda Bake Shop pattern called Meet Cute by Preeti Harris of Sew Preeti Quilts.   I had the perfect fabrics in my stash to make this, including a self-made jelly roll of Kona Bone that I had abandoned maybe 10 years ago when I thought I might want to make a checkerboard quilt.  I decided to make four extra blocks than the pattern calls for, making a square (instead of a rectangle) quilt that measures about 70" square.  

Here's the result:

As I was sewing the columns of rectangles together, I endeavored to have a rainbow/spectrum type of feel.  When I got to the very end of my fabric pieces, I just put together whatever I could (hence the slightly less pretty block you can mostly see on the top right of the above picture.  

I quilted this quilt on my longarm with a free motion floral design.  I was pretty pleased with how it came out:

I backed the quilt in a $1 a yard Marden's find (an oldie from Erin McMorris) and bound the quilt in an Art Gallery dot. 

All of these pictures were taken in haste as the sun was setting.  I knew I wanted to pack it all up to ship to my husband's grandmother the next day.  It arrived in Utah barely in time for Christmas and Grandma Matthews was happy to receive the quilt.  She's is a sweetheart and I thought it would be nice to gift her with her own quilt to enjoy- she sews a lot for other people.  We've been blessed by some very nice Christmas stockings she's made.  This was one of the very few handmade Christmas items I gifted in 2019.

There are still a few more quilt finishes to document for 2019- I'm getting there!

DYO Sampler

I have quite a bit to catch up to in documenting 2019 quilt finishes.  Here's one of my favorites that was started over five years ago:

The DYO sampler!  It's a hodgepodge of techniques, blocks, and colors.  I still can't believe it's finally done.  I was constantly annoyed with all the different pieces of this quilt that would be lying all around my sewing room (it was started in CO and followed me back to New England, unfinished!).  

But here she is in her finished glory!  Yay!  I love it.  I also love that my kids love it.  Making something that ALL my kids want to claim can be rare- so that's been fun.  

Most of the elements of this quilt were completed years ago, the work I did on this quilt in 2019 was just putting it all together.  I had to do things like: applique the EPP hexagon flowers to a background after sewing them together in a line, add "filler" patchwork- like all the 2.5" squares you can see in the top- all made from scraps!, and I made the wonky patchwork forest trees for the bottom right.  Love it!

Ages ago, in anticipation of finishing this, I bought all sorts of colors of longarm thread: turquoise, chocolate brown, and green.  But I finally realized that this top is SO busy and doesn't need all that custom quilting with tone on tone quilting.  I decided to do an all over spiral with grey thread and it worked out great and was much quicker than the custom quilting approach I had been planning.  Now I am not sure what I will do with a huge spool of chocolate brown longarm thread!   

That stag!  It was days of foundational paper piecing.  If I had to do it over again, I definitely would have picked fabrics with more contrast (more darks, mediums....) but I am still very proud of it and I know it's one of the key highlights of this quilt.

The choice of the phrase "Live Free or Die" relates to my love for NH (state motto), the fact that it's succinct and was only 13 letters, and I think it's kind of funny- so passionate!  So clear!  So New England!

I backed this quilt in stuff from my stash- my surplus of stash backing fabrics is ridiculous.  I constantly find good deals on fabric and justify my indulgence by saying it will be for a backing.  It felt good to use up some of these oldies here:

Thanks for reading!