Amelia's Garden Quilt

I did actually finish this one, just in time (like -- no lie -- the night before we arrived in Ruislip, where Amelia lives) for our visit to Starman's sister and brother-in-law.

Here's Amelia on her brand new quilt. She's wearing her bridesmaid dress -- it turned out to be a surprisingly warm and sunny September day.

Her blue and white dress was, of course, not Amelia's choice of color scheme -- she's a very pretty-in-pink sort of girl. The quilt fits in much better with her aesthetic.

Free motion quilting on the back -- again, I borrowed a loopy floral design I saw in a magazine. I'm not yet considering myself an accomplished free motion quilter, but I'm getting better. Most importantly, I now feel confident that I can do the quilting on these utilitarian quilts. I'm not yet at the "heirloom" quilt level, and forget show quilts. But hey, most of what I want to do is make utilitarian quilts, so that's fine for now.

This isn't a very helpful photo, but if you click on it you'll be able to see better what I was trying to do. This is a relatively complicated pieced back -- I had made matching nine-patches, meaning light-dark-light as well as dark-light-dark. Only the latter got used on the front, so I used all the light-dark-light ones on the back. At the same time, I had some toile that was the perfect color scheme for this quilt, but it didn't really go on the front, so I wanted it on the backing. Throw in the pink mattress ticking, and I had a pieced backing. It was all a bit tight (my fault -- I'm still learning!) but I managed and was even able to use the basting method I wrote about here.

This quilt was actually originally planned for a different Amelia (baby daughter of a former colleague) but it came out so pretty (I really love this quilt) that I had to give it to Starman's niece. But he has two other nieces and two nephews, so they all need to get quilts too. Next up, a log cabin quilt for Lucy -- if you design it right (and I'm trying), the blocks make the letter L. And I have an S quilt for Sam coming up after that.