...A Recent Quilt That I Made

Past October, I was approached by an online friend, Debbie, about making a quilt for her granddaughter.  I said that I could do it so I asked few her some questions about color choices. Debbie desired a quilt that had a definite "girl" look to it. The Mom liked everything in beiges, browns and neutral colors and she disliked anything pink.  I worked with Debbie via emails and messages on Facebook. I spent some time searching for fat quarters of fabrics in various Etsy shops. I was staring at this piece of fabric. It had the elements that I was looking for, the browns and pinks. 

I learned something through various design shows and art classes of my youth about colors. My Mom even played an important roll in my life with colors. She was an interior designer and I learned many things by watching her work her magic. With these lessons in life, I learned that when you want to bring colors that are pleasing to more than one person which in this case are the grandmother and the mother of the sweet baby girl. The Mom preferred browns and grandma wanted some pink. I brought the two colors together because when the Mom sees it, she'll be drawn to the browns and grandma will notice the pinks while neither will notice the other color! 

Try this yourself sometimes, pair up with someone and find out the colors that each of you like the most, find color elements of those colors and see what you notice more!

Take a look at this example of pink and browns! It has that girly look but not over-powering!

This was the next pick to go with the first fabric.

I needed more choices still! For a decent quilt, you would like to have several combination of colors and prints in fabrics. So, in the first fabric I picked up the brown and pink then expanded it with green and sorta of an orange. Then I found the fabric shown below. Things were coming together! I was so excited! I told Debbie that I will find the color combination that she and the mother would be happy with. And THAT I had to also like it too, for I find it very difficult to sew or make something that I totally dislike!  I needed to be in a happy mood while sewing! 

After bringing the top three together, I was on the search for more possibilities! 

This piece had the browns, greens, white and also the orange, adding the various shades of the blues into the mix. Fabulous, huh? Also it has smaller flowers than the one above! That is important also to mix the sizes of the prints, to give it a balance!

The blues have been added in, now what? Well, how about a bit more of the dark blue (yes, I am aware that it is turquoise) to balance the darkness of the browns? Perfect! and it also has the white! Look at that! I was so excited as these were coming together! One more thing to find! It is what is known as "magic" fabric. I forget the actual explanation of it but anyhow, I am the one who is creating this masterpiece! 

Aha! The Magic! Look! Without knowing, this magic was the icing! After I showed these examples to Debbie, she had told me that the mother always called her grandmother, Butterfly, in Russian! This was when I knew that all the pieces of the fabrics were meant to be!

See if you agree with the following pictures!

Isn't that beautiful? I am awe struck with it myself. I really do not give myself enough credit at times, but I have always gone with my instincts. I am amazed that I can do stuff like this.

One last thing that I needed to finish this quilt was the backing! I kind of do things a bit backwards and take a lot of risks doing this! Good Grief! Where was I going to find the backing to go with this beauty?

Something else that you should know about. I have been making these type of quilts lately with fleece for the back and no batting. It is just something that I started doing for making scrap quilts for doggies and kitties. It is sturdier and I machine quilt the fleece backing to the quilt top.  Okay so now, to find the perfect fleece backing! 

Well, I did FIND it! I kid you not and I barely believe it myself. Unfortunately I cannot recall what  online fabric store it was! Remember what I said about the butterfly? Take a look at the next picture!

Click on the picture to enlarge!

It was meant to be, huh? Ah, did you notice how the pink kind of disappeared away? Well, the pink was only meant to be a hint for the girly bit of the quilt!

I am pleased to say that Debbie LOVED the quilt for her granddaughter!

I am looking forward to making more quilts this Spring and Summer to add them to my Etsy Shop "Yesterday's Scraps, Tomorrow's Treasures". In case you wonder, I do not make any quilts for sale that is bigger than crib size. Anything bigger takes away the fun of sewing quilts for me.

Thank You for your visit to my blog!

~Karrieann