I stopped by one of my favorite local quilt shops River Bank Fabrics and More the other day and asked if they wanted any samples sewn. You might ask why would you do that sew something and not get to keep it. There are a couple of answers to that question; 1) I don’t have to make the final decision when picking out fabrics. 2) If I am using one of the patterns from the store it requires very little thinking and designing on my part, just follow the recipe/pattern.
The shop owner, Coral picked out this pattern Looking Both Ways by The Sweet Tea Girls Patterns and some luscious fabrics for me to work with.
I quickly got sewing and was loving the vibrance of the fabrics.
This quilt top comes together quickly since the blocks finish out at 12” square.
Now it was time to add my personal touches --- how was I going to quilt this? I could do an edge-2-edge design which seems to be the current trend but the more that I looked at this quilt top the more I was convinced it needed some special attention. And since I love to impress myself with the things I can do with my Babylock Solaris sewing and embroidery machine I got started.
Starting with the light background areas I added stippling. I know this is easily done with free motion quilting but I like how the embroidery machine keeps all the stitches and spacing even.
Next step… those half log cabin squares, I could have just done straight lines or quilt in the ditch or something really fancy in each of the narrow strips but I did not want to distract from this beautiful fabric. I decided I was going to use and edge-2-edge design to just fill this block.
Some of this quilting is hard to see but I love that so the fabrics really are the focus.
Now those little purple squares and their triangle partners. With the Solaris fills I can change the size and layout to create motifs I can quilt.
And I did the same with a different fill for the blue squares.
Triangles next I found a great triangle quilting design and decided to use it in the purple triangles…
…and another design for the pink triangles.
Added a feather border in the large print border and was super happy with the results. And my friend loved it.
