Peach Hourglass quilt

In our last episode, I left you with the above shot of this little quilt that I made for my friend Emily, and her new sweet baby Elanor. I was lucky enough to go and say hello to Elanor on Friday, and let Emma play with Elanor's big sister, one of her favorite friends. 

 You might notice that the blue elephants from the earlier photos didn't make it into this quilt. I decided in the end to go with a strictly pink and yellow colour scheme. There was enough print, pattern and value in this quilt to make it interesting, it didn't need extra colour.  I ended up editing about 4 fabrics out of the final quilt - so I had to make more blocks to have a final quilt that worked.

 I like working with low volume prints instead of just solids - I like the extra interest it adds. It is challenging, however, as most of the low volume prints I'm attracted to are very busy. So I added all the solid white to calm the busy down, as my friend is one of those all-white-and-wood Swedish design type people. She has very good taste and a well put together elegant home. I felt the need to honour that and make her a pretty, tasteful, soothing quilt.

 Because there were so many secondary patterns produced by the way I laid out the houglass blocks (more details here) I wanted to quilt in a way that would emphasize the diamonds. I talked my quilting plans over with Valerie and we decided I should just do simple diamond quilting. Of course, my brain went all spastic and I decided to free motion quilt hearts and flowers in it instead.

 This proved to not be enough quilting, and made the diamonds less clear. So I went back after it was 2/3 of the way bound and added diagonal lines. Yes, I broke one of the "laws" of Modern Quilting and QUILTED IN THE DITCH. It really was necessary with this quilt, and I think in the end it was what pulled the design together in the end.

 This is the only photo of the full quilt  I took - I tried to convince Emma to hold it up, but she laid it on the mini trampoline instead.

 So, there you have it.

 Details:
Hourglass block tutorial:  Cluck Cluck Sew
Fabrics: various (if you want to know what one is, just ask)
Size: 30" x 45"
Machine pieced and quilted by me.

And much appreciated by its new owners! I hope it sees lots of spit up and gets so ragged and worn that I see it and think, "Gosh, where did they get that great old . . . oh, I made that". I love it when that happens.