This is supposed to arrive by the end of the day, so I’m crossing my fingers that it’s safe to post about this now.  I was in the middle of making the wedding quilt when my sister-in-law confided to me that my niece really wanted me to make a quilt for her but was hesitant to ask.  It was just days before her birthday so too late for that, months before Christmas so too early for that.  But it’s hard to resist when someone that you really love and care about says they’d rather have something handmade from you than anything else.

I traded a couple of emails with her mom regarding ideas and before long I realized it would be a lot easier if I just asked my niece directly.  She’s a college graduate and living out on her own, but I have a picture of her in my sewing room from when she was in grade school so I can’t help it if sometimes I think of her from when she was little.

She found 3 quilts that she really liked and even said which one was her favorite – which is the top picture in this post.  Only problem was, although she saw it on Pinterest, it linked to an unknown Flickr account and although I searched and searched, I never did end up finding out who the owner was so that I could do the right thing and buy their pattern.

I have a number of friends who are artists in one field or another; I’ve bought oil paintings, music, etc. and if someone supports themselves this way then they oughta get paid is my thought on the subject.  If I ever can trace this back to a designer’s website then I’ll square up with them at that point.

 Update! Thanks to a kind reader, the original has been found at Salty Oat. 

In the meantime, well I recreated it in EQ7 and went with 6×6 12″ blocks for a finished size of 72×72″.  She had said she wanted a throw quilt for the couch and not a bed sized quilt so hopefully this covers the size she had in mind.  As you can see, it’s a string of half square triangles.  The pattern isn’t what makes this quilt; instead it’s how the triangles are placed in relation to the others around them as well as definitely the colors used.  She emailed me a color palette so I hope I got it close.  And when I was done, I had just about an inch of thread left on the bobbin.  Perfection!

I finally started working on it in earnest after I completed the college quilt, the cancer quilt and the wedding quilt.  It was quick and easy to put together and with some help I had it basted in about an hour.  I just realized I forgot to take a photo of the back which had a single row of blocks running across it.  Hmph.  Anyway, I added in an extra color than the original pattern but overall stuck with the design since she said she liked it.  I quilted it with simple large cross hatches like the quilt that inspired it.

I took it to the LQS where I bought the fabric for it, then I took it to the quilt guild meeting this week so it’s been pretty much everywhere so far except on its way to my niece’s place!  I did finally mail it out on Wednesday so she’ll have the box waiting for her when she gets off work.

I usually just post on my blog and leave it, but moments after I found the creator of the original quilt, my niece texted me a photo of the quilt once she received it so I’m going to edit this post to show it off in its new home.

She was excited!  I was excited!  And best of all it fits with the room so well, with just enough punch to make it complement the room.

In the meantime, I’m finally back to working on the machine quilting blocks from Leah Day.  Apparently I do much better with weekly Bloom quilt blocks or bi-weekly Splendid Sampler blocks than I do with monthly blocks.  I had 5 that at least had the top pieced, 3 of which were also quilted.

I decided to go ahead and catch up on all the piecing and then go back and quilt them in order.  The piecing part is so easy, in fact I used my 12″ Qube from AccuQuilt for the June block and had everything cut perfectly literally in minutes.

What trips me up is I’ve tried in the past to have my quilting match hers 100%.  I am going to follow her overall pattern for the rest of these, but not get so hung up on the issue if one or more blocks has some slight quilting deviations from hers.

Her original design calls for red, orange, and yellow.  Nice colors and nothing wrong with that but I decided to add a total of 6 colors and include blue, green, and purple in the mix.  I probably won’t end up putting my blocks in the same order that she has hers in since I want to spread the colors out evenly.  Of the 6 that I have done so far, I’ve made sure to have a different color in the corner of each block and worked my way around the color wheel for the 2 supporting colors in each block.  Now I’ll need to review my notes to see what I had planned for the remaining 6.

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