I'm doing my best to keep my priorities intact.  I miss this space and thought a quilt finish was just the excuse to get back here.

I had to go back through my instagram feed to see how long this quilt top sat finished before I had it quilted.  It was almost a year.  I can't believe I let it sit for that long.

It was long arm quilted with swirls in a turquoise thread.  I love everything about this quilt.  The fabric is Jeni's Dreaming Vintage line.  I'm generally not one to go for warm colors but I love how all of these colors look together.  It's such a happy group of prints.  The pattern is Golden Afternoon, also by Jeni.  I bound the quilt with two shades of green and backed it with a sewing machine print that coordinates in the very best way.

I'm keeping this quilt for myself.  I'm greedy like that.

I finished this quilt in April, but I'm just getting around to looking at the photos I took just after it was bound and washed.

Can you tell it was a windy spring around here?

The inspiration for the pattern came from Barbara Brackman's Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns.  The four large blocks in the center are #713 basket of chips.  When I mentioned the blocks name to the spouse he immediately pointed out that Cj's favorite potato chips are orange, green, and yellow.

Boom, we had a color palette!

Those blocks were so full of triangles that I continued the idea with different triangles in the borders and added a sawtooth block to each corner with a row of teeth around the edge.

Here's the back.  It's a mix of coordinating prints.

Again, the wind.

This will be going into my shop once, I complete a little shop redo sometime this summer.

I didn't plan to make a postage stamp quilt, but it seems that's what I ended up doing. I knew I wanted to do a black and white quilt.  I already had a great mix of black & white and black & off white geometrics.

I knew I wanted to bind it in a bright color and this blue jumped out at me from the shelf.

I started out by cutting 4 1/2" squares, but they were too big for what I had in mind.  I ended up cutting each of them into quarters.  I loved the look until I started to stitch them up - all those little corners to match up.  I randomly stitched blue corners on some of the blocks just to add a little color.  I was afraid I was going to run out of blocks so I decided to add the blue cross to use up some space.  I'm so glad I did.  I think it makes the quilt top much more interesting.

I didn't have a plan for the back until I was wondering around the shop with the blue under my arm and spotted Kate Spain's Central Park line.

It's machine quilted with an old gold thread.

I didn't want it to be too  structured since the blocks were already arranged in a strong grid.  I decided to go with a wandering diagonal.  I didn't use guides so that the stitching lines would have a bit of flow to them.

It's listed for sale over at etsy and big cartel.