Evania's quilt

There's a tiny bit of the purple kitty-paw-print!

Evania's quilt was a true departure for me. I'd seen an idea in a book about little "improv" blocks, and decided to give it a try. I also wanted to experiment with letting the quilting of a quilt take a higher priority in the design of the quilt, and figured there was no better way to do it than with a solid light colored background. The color families still follow the general colors of the other kids' quilts - purple, green, yellow and pink, but with lots of lee-way within those general ranges. The pink square is made of the left over from the backing of Rinnah's quilt.

I used a variety of different patterns for the machine quilting. Some straight lines evenly spaced, some with a more rhythmic approach, and some randomly spaced. One portion has leaves and curving lines, and one (the last one, because I'm still not very good at it!) is a free-form of swirls and flowers.

The backing of Evania's quilt is a bright, cheery print to offset the mostly-yellow front (just in case she isn't as interested in my experimentation!) Instead of trying to hide the necessary seam, I highlighted it with a row of scraps from the fabrics on the front of the quilt. I was particularly pleased with how well the stitching on the narrow-wide part of the quilting ended up aligning with the stripe on the backing. I *tried* to do it, but wasn't sure how closely I could hit it since I was working from the front!

The binding on this one was a separate binding instead of bringing the backing over to the front. I had some 1" double fold bias binding left over from repairing a quilt for my mother-in-law, and from a quilt I had made for a client. The colors (dark purple and dark green) were just right for this quilt. I estimated, stitched it on, and then realized I didn't have *quite* enough, so finished it off with an on-the-grain double folded border in pink to get around the last corner. The binding was machine stitched onto the front and then hand-blind-stitched on the back side.

The quilt was machine pieced, cutting the pieces for the small improv squares as I went - none of them were pre-planned, and one of them was so lousy I didn't use it. ;) I used low-loft cotton batting and machine quilted it. It was finished *after* Gloria was born and after we'd started the adoption process for B and T! Nothing like impending future work to provide the incentive to get a project finished!