This weekend, my family and I spent many hard but good hours selling off my mother’s extensive collection of craft supplies, including almost 2,000 yards of quilting fabric. (Thank you to those of you who came out – despite the busy-ness of the day, it was nice to meet some of you!) Some of my Mother’s dearest friends helped us prepare for sale and handle the transactions throughout the day. After our very successful sale was over, we then went off to see my Mother’s final four quilts displayed in the local quilt show; and while there ogling over her amazing talent, we ran into several more of her friends that knew her and loved her dearly. The whole weekend felt like one more celebration of my Mother the Quilter…and while exhausting and emotional, it was lovely and wonderful to spend time around the people, the fabric, and the projects my Mother loved the most. I had a different project cued up to show you today, but I bumped this one to the front of the line. It only felt right that after this long weekend centered around fabric and quilting that I show you my latest quilt!

Fire Quilt-001

As some of you loyal readers know, I am making a quilt a month for the rest of this year in an effort to improve my quilting skills and reflect about my Mom at the same time! This quilt came about when I snagged these beautiful batik strips from my Mother’s fabric stash a few months ago. I was so in love with the colors; and when I discovered THIS technique for strip quilting, I couldn’t wait to give it a go!

I originally sewed up half the strips (there were two sets of what is pictured above) and was going to assemble the blocks into a rainbow quilt. I love this strip technique so much. It’s so simple and so fast, and you end up with some great combinations! Just look at all these lovely blocks!

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Fire Quilt-003

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While I had all my blocks sewn together in just a day or two, the real challenge was figuring out how to lay them out – this technique gives you too many options! After playing with what felt like a million different combinations, I decided to sew up the second set of strips to make even more blocks in the same color combos. I then split the blocks in to “warms” and “cools” to make two different quilts. I just loved the look of these reds, oranges, yellows and purples together! Aren’t the colors amazing?!?

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After much deliberation, I decided to sew the warm-colored squares together into an ombre-style square pattern and I couldn’t be more thrilled with the final result. It’s a relatively small quilt (measuring about 42×60″), but it’s vibrant, fun and fresh, and SOOOO “me”!

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Fire Quilt-008

I quilted this one following the square design of all the strips. This was the first time I did something other than straight-line quilting, and I adore the results!!!

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Although it’s been months since Mom passed away, this quilt brought out a lot of emotion in me. This was her fabric – her beloved batiks that she picked out for some project that was never gotten to. Also, this was the first project I made using my Mother’s sewing machine that I inherited after death. While I can’t deny that I loved working with this huge upgrade from the machine I’ve been using for 9 years, I was really quite overwhelmed with emotion as I made a quilt with her fabrics using her machine. I smiled and cried a lot putting this one together…I hope she likes it 🙂

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I’m calling this one “Fire” because I used all the warm-tone blocks. I’ll have it’s companion quilt (“Ice”) ready to show you in a few weeks! I hope you all had a fantastic weekend. I’m physically and emotionally spent so I’m looking forward to a few down days! Check back later this week for my latest furniture reveal – I think you’re gonna love it!

Megan

See You Soon!
Megan