Quilts for Sisters

Remember earlier this summer when I got hoodwinked by old wives’ tale predictions and made a flying geese quilt for my neighbors’ anticipated baby boy? Well, instead they had a beautiful baby girl! I opted to keep the blue quilt for another baby, and instead, I was inspired to make complimentary but not quite matchy quilts for the baby and her big sister.

Back when big sister was born, I was working extremely long hours at my old job. I would have loved to make her a quilt, but instead I needed my free time to do other things, like sleep and occasionally see loved ones.

This summer I had the time to make quilts for both sisters, and I had the Heather Ross fabric calling to me. I fell in love with the idea of making quilts for the sisters out of Heather's two most recent releases: Far Far Away and Briar Rose.

This Spring I finally cut into my stash of Briar Rose for a couple of other projects that are still in process. I had enough left over to make a scaled down version of Rae Hoekstra’s lovely Briar Rose Rainbow Quilt. 

In May, I went to hear Heather speak at Powell’s Books about her memoir, How to Catch a Frog. I was completely charmed by Heather. I’ve loved her art for years, but she also proved to be a captivating writer and speaker, and a friendly and funny person. I really enjoyed meeting her, and as if that wasn’t enough, I was lucky enough to snag the last charm pack of Far Far Away that she was handing out that night. I wanted to make something special and memorable with the 5 ¼ inch squares, and I didn’t want to cut them up and lose the special little details in the seam allowances. Ultimately I decided on sawtooth stars.

The Briar Rose quilt was not my own design, but it was my first circle quilting project. I was really happy with the way the finished circles looked. 

I backed the Briar Rose quilt in the same Kona Silver I used as sashing and background fabric in the Far Far Away sawtooth star quilt. The Far Far Away quilt was backed with yardage of the pink Princess and the Pea fabric from the collection, and I stitched around the stars and also sewed lines connecting the stars to one another.

Both quilts were bound with the same pale blue fabric cut on the bias so that I could round off the corners. I love how rounded edges soften the look of a quilt.

It’s always bittersweet to give away a quilt you’ve put your heart into, but this time it wasn’t so bad, knowing they’ll be living right next door.