Birth of a quilt

Commercial brown cottons. We spent an hour looking through all the fabrics and they picked the ones for the quilt.	Birth of a Quilt I collected a number of blue fabrics when my daughter said she wanted her wedding quilt to be blue and brown. I even pulled out my color wheel(s) so she could be specific about what blues and browns she wanted. After collecting fabrics for a few months I had her and my son in law come over to my studio.
Blue commercial cottons.	I also painted blue and brown fabrics. Again my daughter came over and selected the pieces she liked. Like myself, Beth is an artist and has been picking fabrics for me since she was a child. While I could surprise her with the quilt design I knew better than surprise her with the colors.
Painted brown, yellow and black cottons. Once we agreed on the colors, I decided on the type of quilt to make.	Also in the back of both of our minds is the fact that she has longhaired black cats and cats love quilts. While the cats aren't allowed to sleep on quilts, that doesn't stop them from seeing how the quilts feel and if they are comfortable to nap on. So we both agreed that a light colored quilt would not be practical. Beth always enjoyed my random patchwork quilts so this part of the process was easy to decide.
Painted blue cottons, some with metallic paints.	You can see from all the fabrics that I had a wonderful pallet of light, medium and dark fabrics to choose from. For several weeks I sewed all sorts of patchwork patterns, much more than I needed for the quilt. After deciding on the block size set on the diagonal I began to piece the blocks and pin them up on my work wall. I constantly moved the blocks around as new ones were added.
Some of the brown pieced stripe patchwork.	The blocks were up on the work wall for several months as I decided on the final placements. I decided that the light browns and blues looked wonderful in the middle of the quilt and placed the dark colors along the outer sections. Most of the half triangles around the outside are painted fabrics. Some of them are also used in other blocks.
Some of the blue pieced stripe patchwork.	After the blocks were arranged to my satisfaction I had to decide on the color of the stripe fabric to use between each block. Again I cut different color blue and brown fabrics to pin up between the blocks. Originally I was going to use different color stripes but found it distracting from the over all design. I finally settled on the dark blue commercial cotton for the stripes and the outside of the quilt and the binding.
Quilting using my Bernina sewing machine. I used a cotton-polyester batting and a king size 100% cotton sheet for the back. It took nearly a day to pin the quilt and my fingers were sore manipulating all those safety pins.	I first used my walking foot and from the center of the quilt, quilted outward to the edge of the quilt. This was a slow process since each time I reached the outside I had to end my sewing and then move back to the center to sew out in another direction along the dark blue strips. Using this method I could evenly distribute the movement of the fabric and batting to prevent wrinkles and uneven stretching. As you will notice I use a Bernina so quilting in the center of this large quilt is difficult and my shoulders hurt. I did free motion quilting in the block areas keeping the dense of the quilting even through out the quilt. It took a month to quilt it. I attached the binding like I describe in my lesson section and sewed a label on the back. This quilt also had a hanging sleeve.