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| Streamers Quilt --photo from Garnethill.com |
How cute is that picture?? Now normally, I am not really a rainbow quilt kind of girl...I can appreciate a good multi-colored quilt, but they're not usually my first choice to make. But when I saw this picture, I changed my mind a little. I really loved the white breaking up the colored stripes. I knew it would be perfect! So anyway, I quickly went to my Pinterest board and found the picture, clicked through to garnethill.com and looked at more pictures of the quilt. An hour later I had a plan and a pile of fabrics pulled from my stash. There is not a full picture of the inspiration quilt available, but I am fairly sure the stripes run vertically up and down the quilt. I decided to do mine horizontally for ease and speed and I am really happy with how it turned out.
I cut all the strips out freehand with my rotary cutter. I tried to keep them about the same width. Once they were all cut out, I positioned them on a white piece of fabric and pinned to keep them in place. I didn't feel like doing a blanket stitch so I sewed them down using a straight stitch about 3/8" from the edge--I decided I would let the edges fray a little. Once all the strips were sewn down, I flipped it over to the back and cut off the white fabric between the 2 stitch lines of each strip so they would lay flat. This was all done easily in a few hours.
On to the quilting...this probably took the longest-- mostly because I had to sit and agonize over how to quilt it. Typical. In the end I wasn't in love with what I did, but I didn't have time to dork around with it anymore...it just needed to be done! I liked the straight line quilting from the inspiration quilt, but I couldn't do it because of the frayed edges. So I finally decided to do loops in the white sections and the goofy lines and flowers that ended up in the colored sections. Normally I don't like to wash my quilts before photographing or giving away because you can't see the quilting as well. On this one, I had to wash it so the edges would fray well, and I was glad because the quilting blended in a little more.
I bound it in white and showed it to my 4 year old. She loves rainbows, so I thought she would love this quilt. I asked her what she thought of it and she said (sounding very unenthusiastic), "It's OK. But it's missing something." I asked her what it was missing and she said, "It needs a baby." Then later on she said, "Mom, I changed my mind, I do like that quilt...but it still needs a baby." She is such a funny girl. Then when I told her I was going to the baby shower, she said, "Does the baby like to get wet?" I laughed so hard imagining what she must have been thinking we would be doing at the baby shower!
After I had already made the quilt, I found out that the shower was a "diapers and gift cards" shower. Oops! Should have read the invite more closely. I told Ashley she could easily turn this quilt into a gift card by selling it on ebay...I don't think she's going to though. :)
