I have a quilting friend who has been unloading her batiks on me. Lucky me! So when she recently gave me a stack of luscious pinks and cool minty green batik pieces in various sizes, I pulled some yellow out of my own stash and put together this quilt, a pattern that Kaffe Fassett uses quite often, and which he calls Four by Four. It’s a fun and quick way to put together like-minded or contrasting colors and by setting the blocks “on point” you get strong horizontal and vertical lines of color.
Unfortunately I didn’t purchase enough green for the back. Argh. But then I remembered I had some leftover pink and yellow Four Patch blocks, so I used those, plus a strip of solid pink, to get the back to the correct dimensions to give to the long-armer. She has an industrial size quilting machine — well, 2 of them actually! — which is computerized. With hundreds of quilting designs to choose from, once the quilt is loaded onto the frame, the needle threaded, the bobbin wound, and the design is selected, she pushes Start and off the machine goes, quilting all by itself. It’s great fun to watch. And while the computerized machine is doing its thing, she does custom work on her other long-arm, i.e. moving the machine herself to create specific and sometimes much more detailed designs that a customer requests.
Since this quilt reminds me of a garden we chose a floral pattern for the quilting design, using variegated pastel thread. The result is quite lovely, I think.
But I’m not attached to the quilt and when another friend asked what I was going to do with it, I said, “I don’t know. Do you want it?” We settled on a price and so, this one will soon be going to its new owner to decorate her walls in her new home which she says are … yellow! Perfect, huh?
Sings the Raven 