It's A Keeper

I've been working like crazy on another quilt for our New Year's show at Glad Creations. It's a One-Block Wonders quilt from a book of the same name by Maxine Rosenthal. Maxine is a Minnesota quilter, so that makes her piecing technique all the more special to me.

Her second book, One-Block Wonders encore!, was co-authored with Joy Pelzmann. It shows how to make the hollow cubes that you see scattered throughout the quilt top. They were time-intensive to make (at first), but so much fun. I think they add a lot.

I love how this quilt top turned out! The main fabric I used was designed by McKenna Ryan for her fusible applique patterns. It has an abstract design meant to be used as rainbow trout for her pattern series, Calling Me Home.

In addition to the main fabric, I used batiks and animals prints. Hot pink and leopard just belong together, don't you think?

Arranging all the blocks, however, was not as much fun. It took a lot of help from my friends, Amy and Nathan, to get it just right. In fact that's what I'm calling the quilt: I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends.

Because I had a few blocks left over that I didn't want to part with, they went into the quilt back along with a piece of the original fabric. I added other scraps for borders, and a final border of snake skin fabric, until I ended up with another quilt top. I think I now have a reversible quilt.

Now it's off to the long-armer for quilting. I already can't wait to get it back. And I've warned my family: I'm keepin' this one!