sunny windmills

My good friend Kim is about to have her first baby!  I made her baby (sex unknown) a quilt to welcome it into this world.  As I have done with every quilt I have made so far, I did something I have not done before with this one.

I made a two-sided quilt.  Of course, I didn't look up the best way to make a two-sided quilt, I just forged ahead and made a complete quilt top and a complete quilt bottom.  And then I had to very carefully make my quilt "sandwich" and baste the heck out of it with safety pins.  Had I looked online, I would have discovered that people recommend making two sided quilts one block at a time.  That would have made my life a lot easier!

Here is the quilt.  I'm calling it Sunny Windmills.

 On one side I used blue as the accent (which comes across brighter in these photos than it actually is), and the other side I used yellow as the accent.  The print has all sorts of animals on it.

Because it was two-sided, I thought it would be great to use the quilting to mimic the windmill pattern on the white squares.  I quilted it in a triangular spiral on each section of the windmill.  The quilting lines were about a half inch apart from each other.  The quilting was tedious, having to continually turn the quilt to get it through the machine, but I think the ultimate effect was totally worth it.  I think the quilting shows through wonderfully!

Here is a close-up of the blue side with the quilting.  I am so pleased with how this turned out!  The green sashing helps to bring out the other colors in the print.















Lest you think that I actually planned the quilt this way, let me show you a few photos of the blocks on my design wall.  I did have a plan for the quilt, but once I put it together, I didn't like the way it looked and so I actually ripped out the seams on quite a few blocks so that I could make it better.

Many of the ones above were just too busy.  I wanted something a bit more calm in terms of design, so I got to the point where I tried the one on the bottom right.  It still seemed like it was missing something to bring it together, so I added the green sashing you see in the pictures above.

It was such fun making this quilt and I find that I really enjoy the process of design.