I have a really fun quilt to show you today, but first let’s play a little catch-up, shall we?

So, I had a baby in April. His name is William and he is the sweetest little red-headed bundle of joy. Perhaps I’ll post more here about him soon, but I confess I have a growing desire to keep private anything that has to do with my children so I’m mulling over it for the time being.

In the few weeks before he arrived, I had a burst of creative energy, and I made five or six quilt tops. I think part of this came from being shut in due to COVID-19. Truthfully, we’ve been a one car family for a few years now, plus we homeschool, so we are all quite used to ‘isolation’. Of course, we do get to leave sometimes in normal circumstances, and I used to go to the grocery store and Target and HomeGoods, but its mostly the same as life before coronavirus. One way this directly affected my sewing is that supplies like batting have been sold out and places I like to shop at online have either stopped fulfillment or are now doing so with delays. Initially, March and April were to be spent preparing for a maker’s market that was to take place on Mother’s Day weekend, but because of changes brought on by the virus, I found myself unable to procure the supplies I needed to make what I was planning to make for the market.

So what was I to do with a market to prep for and none of the supplies I needed? It seemed like an awfully great time to get creative with whatever was on hand. I had saved a bunch of little cuts of Rifle Paper Co fabric from various quilt projects. They were all rather small pieces, but I wanted to use them however I could to make a baby quilt for the market. I came across Erica Jackman’s Plaid-ish Quilt pattern on Instagram, and I thought it would be the perfect use of my little fabrics. I downloaded the free pattern, scaled it WAY down, and set out to cut my small fabrics into even smaller pieces. The very biggest piece I would need was only 2″ and the smallest only 1″. I sewed all the blocks together on my Janome Skyline S9, and I’m so thankful that machine handled all those tiny pieces so well!

Rifle Paper Co has a lot of navy based prints, so I mostly used those for the darker areas. I used a variety of colorful fabrics for the “medium value” sections. And for the low volume sections, many of which were small strips or centers, I actually made use of some Rifle selvedges that have lightly printed designs on them. Ordinarily these would get thrown out, but with this quilt being on such a small scale, I was able to use quite a lot of these pieces in the low volume spots, and I think they go so well! They are such pretty, dainty designs and I’m thrilled they could be so efficiently used. This quilt finished at just 31.5″ square, and is made up of 729 little pieces of fabric.

Shortly after finishing this top of this quilt, the market was cancelled. I suppose that’s a blessing since nothing has changed as far as being able to quickly and easily get supplies, but it also stinks since I was planning on having income from the show. Thankfully, someone reached out to me about wanting to buy this quilt to use as wall decor, so I’m immensely grateful for that!

I used the past couple of weeks since having William to hand quilt this little quilt. In between nursing and baby snuggles, I snuck in some stitches whenever I was able to do so. I absolutely love the process of hand quilting, and I found this time to be no different. It’s such a meditative and relaxing activity.

The back of this quilt is a favorite print from Rifle Paper Co’s Wildwood collection. The navy background is the perfect setting for all the bright pops of color throughout!

I bound the quilt in a periwinkle Cotton + Steel basic that I think was made to coordinate with an earlier Rifle Paper Co collection.

I think this quilt is going to look just lovely on a wall. It’s got great contrast, and thanks to the hand quilting, it also has a lot of texture.

Over the next couple of weeks, I’m hoping to show you the other quilts I’ve been working on. My next task is to quilt a large plaid quilt [top] I made after I had completed the top of this mini. I’m sure it will take me longer than usual to quilt it since I’m soaking up all the baby snuggles I can get at the moment, but I’m perfectly content with that. Babies don’t keep!

-Meredith