Floating Rectangles Quilt


Here is a quilt I finished a few days ago. It is for my cousin Nate who is getting married next week. I've known he was getting married for a couple months but I wasn't really planning on making a quilt. Well once I got the invite I decided, what the heck. I'm not sure if they'll like it or not..."amazing original handmade quilt by cousin Cynthia" was definitely NOT on their registry. But it was either this, or a Target gift card. I'm sure a gift card is probably what they would really like, but too bad. Everyone else can get them a gift card. :)

Since this was a tiny bit last minute, I wanted to do something fast. I thought about just making this quilt again--but with different fabric:


I wanted to try and use fabrics I already had, so I peeked through my stash and pulled out a bunch of stuff. Unfortunately, I didn't have pieces large enough to make a quilt that was exactly the same. So I decided to just use the same layout (it's from the layout library in EQ6-- one of the irregular grids) but add a white border around each piece so I could use less of the print fabrics, and this is how it ended up...


I like the way it turned out, but I would like to try this again with a little less white space--with so much white space the rectangles all look like they are floating to me.


The fabric is two-thirds Cherish Nature by Deb Strain for Moda and the rest is just random stuff I had that happened to match. And I am happy to announce that I didn't buy one thing for this quilt...it all came from my stash. I just barely had enough of the white. Yay! I love it when that happens!


For the quilting on this one I decided to make my own pantograph using elements from the main floral print. I usually don't mind making my own pantographs, but this time QuiltCAD and I were totally in a fight almost the entire time. I was completely frustrated, but I know it wasn't QuiltCAD's fault...I just forgot about the "matrix" feature. It lets you see how the design will fit together which makes it easier to edit so there aren't big gaps or overlapping lines in your design. Without using that feature it was pretty hard to make it work. So in the end it didn't turn out exactly how I would have liked, but overall I think it looks acceptable.


For the back I used this almost matching dotty fabric that I had on hand--more of the $2/yard fabric--man I am just using that stuff up left and right! Yeah! I had a few scraps left over from the quilt top so I made scrappy binding...didn't want to add any more fabric to my already overflowing scrap bag.


ahhh...