Tuesday, July 9, 2013

Aqua Blue and Lime Green and Two Very Different Quilts

Aqua looks good with just about every color ... but my favorite is with lime green.  I've yet to meet something aqua that I was not immediately drawn to.  My heart's desire is a pair of aqua cowboy boots ... someday, sigh.


The circles quilt I made a couple years ago as a wall hanging in the laundry room to hide the electrical panel.  The walls are a soft soft lime color and the floor is black and white check so it looks really zippy. I'm going to try and make a Christmas wall hanging with lime green and red (same plan as I had last year ... one of these year's anyway).

The chevron zigzag quilt is a girls quilt I just finished for Etsy.  I made the chevrons using a square two-patch method because I wanted the lime green strip a wee bit smaller than the aqua strips ... you don't have the option to vary the widths with the half square or triangle method.

The squares are 6" and the circles are roughly 3" and
the circles are pieced with the freezer paper method.
Anyone who has done their own quilting is familiar with Leah Day's website The Free Motion Quilting Project.  http://freemotionquilting.blogspot.com/

I did the quilting in a 'stream of consciousness' way using several of Leah's patterns.  It was a blast to do!  With the heavy quilting it causes a trapunto effect on the front and I hand quilted around the circles to give them even better definition.

The batting is 100% polyester because I wanted to minimize the puckering since it's a wall hanging.  For the quilts I keep warm with I don't like heavy quilting because it makes the quilt too flat (learned the hard way) and I always strive for just the right amount of wonderful quilty puckering ... it's that quilty puckering that makes a quilt so comforting, and warm.



And back to the other aqua lime quilt ... the back is a wonderful Michael Miller gingham that I got years ago.  I have the same pattern it in pink too. They make a wonderful quilt backs.

The strip is made with the little leftover bits from the zigzags.  I really like pieced backs ... and I really like not having scraps left. There was next to nothing left on this quilt.




While we're on the subject of zigzag quilts, thought I would share my sad story of the blue and white batiks ... indigo bleed.  Augh! This quilt was originally intended to be an Etsy quilt, but that beautiful deep rich indigo batik bled into the white.

Chagrin for me ... but not for my brother and sister-in-law ... it's their new boat quilt.  It'll be a great quilt to have for sitting back deck when the evenings are cool.



I did use 3 color catchers in the wash which I think helped
minimize the bleed, but didn't stop it altogether.

Aqua quilt on my aqua screen door.

Here it is on Etsy ....