I would like to apologize for the color quality on the images in this post. I’m not sure what I was thinking when I took these pictures.
Companion quilts
Ava and Emma are sisters and two of the most precious little girls on the planet. When I decided to make quilts for them, I wanted to make two that would go together and that would reflect their playful attitudes. Ava is two (almost three!) and Emma is still pretty new, so I wanted to make something kid friendly, but not something they would grow out of in a couple of years. The Moda “Amelia” line was absolutely perfect. Since I wanted the quilts to go together, I chose a pattern from another of my favorite jelly roll books, Two from One Jelly Roll Quilts
Emma's Quilt
Ava's quilt
Each quilt is made up of a series of nine patch blocks, some with borders, some without, alternating with special blocks designed to make it look like the blocks are overlapping. I was able to make all the nine patch blocks for both quilts at the same time. Then I made all the other blocks and assembled the quilt tops. My biggest complaint with any of the Lintott jelly roll patterns is that their borders are never big enough. I opted to put a thin black border and a wider colored border to match the dominant color in the quilt. I love the way the black really makes the patterns in the other fabrics pop.
These are also the first two quilts that I’ve quilted using the longarm machine. My favorite local quilt shop, Bits and Pieces, does machine rentals. You can bring in your quilt and use their machines to quilt it. The fantastic thing is that they have the computer driven machines that you only have to program and it does most of the work for you. This is so fantastic and definitely on the top of my wishlist for when I have way more money and space than I do now. Both quilts have a solid pink backing (cute backing fabric is so hard to find), so I wanted to pick different quilting patterns for each. One has a star pattern and the other has an adorable loopy daisy pattern.
A loopy daisy pattern I used for one of the quilts.
I also tried a new binding technique for these quilts. I’m terrible at hand sewing and I don’t trust my stitches to stand up to the kind of wear that I hope these quilts will get. As a result, I’ve been machine sewing all my bindings. The thing is, until these, I’ve been doing it all wrong. I had been sewing the binding to the front, turning it, and then blind sewing it to the back. I always wound up with uneven binding on the back, which I would then hide with a decorative stitch. A little poking around online and I discovered that the way better plan is to stitch the binding to the back of the quilt, fold it to the front and then sew. I did still use a decorative stitch and a variegated thread to make everything just a little cuter.
Binding stitch with variegated thread.
I loved making these quilts and I hope my little girlfriends enjoy them for years to come.