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| Ribbons, Posies, and Butterflies--designed and pieced by Alice; quilted by Rita |
I finished the handwork today on the baby quilt I've been working on, off and on, for the past year. The recipient is a little great niece who is now a year old. It is her family that is co-hosting the family reunion we are attending next week in Pennsylvania.
I used the quilt pattern called Turning Twenty, Again, which incidentally would be an excellent quilt for a novice quilter. There's a whole series of "Turning Twenty" books, but this is the first quilt I've made using this concept. Basically, you cut a assortment of squares and rectangles in prescribed dimensions, and then you arrange these into big blocks. In assembling the quilt, you "turn" the blocks so that the block that adjoins it is turned differently. This quilt is composed of just six blocks--two blocks across, three down. Below you can see that I zoomed in on one of the blocks.
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| This shows one of the blocks with its 11 different pieces. |
For the first time ever in eleven years of nearly constant quilting, I cut my binding strips on the bias. One of my quilt heroes, quilt designer and author Marsha McCloskey, advises in several of her books that binding be cut this way. I really liked working with it! It turned so neatly and smoothly from the front to the back.
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| The lovely quilting by Rita shows up especially well on the solid fabrics. |
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| Here you can see the butterfly plainly. |
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| I printed the label on paper-backed fabric designed for ink jet printer, using my new HP Photosmart printer. It did such a good job! This picture shows off more of Rita's quilting, too! |
