Like many quilters, I love to make quilts for family members. The latest to receive a quilt is my niece Abby.

Abby is my youngest niece and she lives outside Chicago. She is also a college freshman and her quilt is going to college.

My other two nieces grew up five miles from me. I was blessed that they spent hours at my home being creative. They started sewing early on. If you search back through the blog, you’ll find photos of the work they did, from scrunchies to quilts.

When I started Abby’s quilt, I knew I wanted to make a fresh, happy, colorful quilt. I asked her for a little guidance on color. She told me she liked blues and purples.

I had lots of scraps. What quilter doesn’t?

I started with pulling swatches that I had of Andover’s Dimple line to narrow down a color range.

In looking through my scraps, I found a fabric that seemed to have all the colors I wanted to use. It’s Soul Garden by Carolyn Gavin from P&B Textiles and no longer available. When I was going through my fabric stash, I used it as my focus fabric to pull the other pieces.

If you don’t have access to fabric swatches as I did, try paint chips or swatches.

I had an idea of what I wanted the quilt to look like and happened on an Instagram post that featured a perfect pattern. I’m not one to choose a commercial pattern, but when it speaks to you …

That pattern is Dayflower by Corey Yoder of Coriander Quilts. It’s in the book Sunday Best Quilts by Sherri McConnell and Corey Yoder.

I loved that I could use a multitude of scraps. I did lose track of how many different fabrics I used. In the finished quilt, no fabric is used more than once in a single block. Well, except once. Can you find it?

The gray fabric was perfect to tie all the colors together. It’s Essentials Circle Burst in Charcoal from Wilmington Prints. I loved the texture of the design. I also thought it would be perfect as a dress fabric. I found it at my local quilt shop, Capital Quilts, once they opened to appointments.

I am not an experienced machine quilter. I need more time to practice than I have. So the machine quilting was done by Amy Mikeska of Mama Did Designs. She found two fabulous designs from Amy Butler to combine. They added just the perfect fresh feel to the quilt.

All quilts need a label. I printed the label on my Epson inkjet printer. I also chose to include a quote on this label.

My niece loves her quilt. And, I’m very happy with how it turned out. It was hard to part with.

Now that it is checked off my list, her brother is next in line. He graduates from high school this spring. His favorite color is yellow.

Time to get to my stash!

Art on!

Tags: Amy Butler, Amy Mikeska, Andover Fabrics, Capital Quilts, Corey Yoder, Coriander Quilts, Mama Did Designs, P&B Textiles, quilting, scrap quilts, Sunday Best Quilts, That Patchwork Place, Wilmington Prints

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