happy plaid quilt

I've been puttering along on a baby quilt for several weeks now, but decided to take some time away from working on Sunday to try to finish this up. Lost interest after quilting it up but finished it up by binding it last night.

the quilt is an entirely different design than I had intended to make. I had this random block design in mind, but after laying out a dozen blocks I decided I hated it and decided to try to come up with something new.



The fundamental problem is one I've been thinking about for a while now. I got a jelly roll of Kona cottons for Christmas in 2009. I love working with solids so I thought it would be the great jumping off point for a quilt. But when I eventually sliced into the roll and tried piecing with it, I hated the results. Here's the terribly lit picture I took before I seam ripped the whole number.



I think the block design has potential but the colors kill me. Even though the colors are all similar hues in the roll, I think they look crazy if you just dump them all together. The same issue came up with this quilt. I had a charm pack of bright solids, but there was too much color and hue variation to just jumble them together.

Solution: Use the color pack in an intentional way rather than randomly combining colors.

The result: my plaid quilt. Or maybe it is a gingham quilt.



Because each block has four squares of four colors, I was able to use the quartered charm squares I had already sliced up. I then used some of my Kona roll (which is handily the same width as a quartered charm square) and ended up buying another Kona roll in some brighter colors as well. That way I had enough color variation so that no two blocks needed to be the same.



I'm thinking this is the kind of quilt my mom will especially like, in part because it is Happy Colors and in part because I put fabric from the newest Hungry Caterpillar collection on the back, which is one of her favorite children's books. I love how Eric Carle's illustration style works with the color variations on the front of the quilt.



The quilting is a random plaid grid design in yellow thread. Green binding because I wanted to pick out the green shade of the pickles + the caterpillar in the backing fabric.



Overall, I am pretty happy with how it turned out. I've been making baby quilts in sad colors and contrasting colors mostly lately so the color choices on this one seem particularly happy and harmonious.