Summer Quilt

This is a quilt I named Summer.  It really only has four colors in it; yellow, orange, pink and red.  It is the largest quilt I have ever made and I love to drape it over the creme chair in the family room.

The whole quilt is made from half square triangles.  I cut loads of them in the orange and yellow and put the triangles in separate paper bags.  Then I randomly pulled out the two colors and sewed them together.  It didn't matter to me what shade of yellow ended up with what shade of orange.  In fact if you look closely most don't match at all.  I just wanted  one of the colors lighter and one darker although I didn't even worry too much about that.

I have to say it really helped to have a large design wall when it was time to lay this out.  I did it in sections because the quilt was so darn big there was no other way to comfortably handle the sections.

The border is done the same way as the center but with reds and pinks.  I really like the way the denser colors on the outside hold in the pattern in the center.

This is a close up of the block itself.  Just half square triangles in two colors.  The only difference in the border was that the blocks were layed out differently.

I always make sure to label my quilts.  When I first started quilting I was sure that because each quilt took me such a long time and that I really "lived" the quilt while I was making it that I would certainly remember when and why I made it.  Not even close.  I regret not labeling some of my early quilts so I could remember what year I made them in!  This little sun was from a  Bernina embroidery card by Mary Engelbriet and it seemed to capture the feeling of this quilt.  I named it Summer because of the backing batik fabric which looked like a sun pattern to me.

The quilting itself is flames.  What else!  I wanted an allover pattern rather than something which would separate each block.  I wish I could say I quilted it myself but alas no.  I had is quilted on a long arm at The Flying Needle which isn't in business anymore, unfortunately.

The pattern for the quilt is in a book called Spectacular Scraps by Judy Hooworth and Margaret Rolfe. 

This is the Winter version.  Same star batik for the backing but this time it looks like snowflakes.  The colorway I used for this one was a lot narrower; blue, green and purple.  Oddly I use this most of the time in the summer as a table covering.  It looks great with white dishes.

Comments

[jackie]

Fabulous! These are really beautiful! I have not worked too much with batks, but when I worked at a little quilt shop for a while, people were mad for them! They are really pretty! Thanks for commenting on my blog yesterday - it's nice when you get comments! It's so funny because I had been on your website earlier looking at the artisan overview and thinking about doing that. So funny how things work! We do have a lot in common! I actually have 2 boys and a girl (I know in my post it sounded like I have 3 boys -oops!). They are 11, 9 and 6 (boy, girl, boy). Enjoy your Thursday!

[mary]

your quilt is beautiful. I love the colors, like a tall glass of raspberry lemondade.

[janet]

This is a really beautiful quilt—love the colors! And I'm so glad you mentioned how important labeling is. I would so love to know more about some of the quilts I inherited from my grandmother—when they were made and by whom. She's not around any more to tell me. The same thing goes for photographs—I have so many that I have no clue who the people are or where the picture was taken.