Here's a quilt I made recently. It has been a while since I made a circle quilt...I had almost forgotten how fun and fast they are!!
This was a total impulse quilt instigated by an email from my aunt announcing a baby shower that I knew I would not be attending. So I decided to go check out the registry and just send something from that. There was just one small problem...while looking at the registry I didn't see a lot that I was super excited to buy. I know you need certain things for a new baby...but it is so much more fun to buy cute little outfits or toys than it is to buy nasal aspirators and diaper rash cream. However, while perusing the registry, I did see a cute Carter's crib sheet:
Now, I could have just bought the sheet...but when I saw it, of course my first thought was of a stack of fabrics these very same colors that I had been meaning to make into a quilt. I decided that since they liked this sheet enough to put on their registry, there was a good chance they would also like a quilt in the same colors...problem solved.
I ran straight down stairs, gathered up the fabrics and immediately began plotting it. I made the design up in Inkscape...just made a bunch of circles and rings, lots of different sizes, then moved them around and changed the colors until I was happy. Then I printed the shapes out for tracing. All the circles were made using the fusible interfacing applique method (like this quilt), and the rings were done with fusible web. I arranged it all on a single piece of white fabric and ironed everything on a little at a time and used a blanket stitch in matching thread to sew it down.
The animal print fabric is Alexander Henry 2-D zoo and all the rest are Riley Blake circle prints from various lines. The binding is Teeny Tiny 2-D zoo in the brown. I probably would have just done a solid brown, but I had the matching mini print, so I figured I might as well use it! The back is a matching solid green, also from my stash, so yay, another quilt made entirely from fabrics I already had!!
The quilting was simple and fast...just chalked a grid of straight lines for the background and used a swirl groovy board for all the circles except the animal print ones...those I just did an echo around the main shapes. I'm pretty happy with how this one turned out!
Yay for babies! One more perfect excuse to make quilts!
And good news...there is now a pattern for this quilt...HERE!!!