Friends! I am truly totally over the moon to share this quilt with you!
When I got the opportunity to make a quilt for the RJR Fabrics WHAT SHADE ARE YOU Blog Hop I was SO excited and when I found out that I would be sharing my quilt on the same weekend I ring in my 34th birthday? Well that was a done deal! HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!
Hitting 34 feels like a total level up to me. In the past my birthdays always came and went without much pomp and circumstance. I’ve never been a real celebrator and lets be honest, I can come up with an excuse for a treat from Rose’s or my favorite ice cream without much effort, so who really needs a birthday? But this year, THIS feels like something. I’ve been treading water through the hardest years of my life and I’m still here! If you follow me on Instagram you know that we recently moved into a new home after three moves in three years, I’ve declared this my year of re-learning self care, and I am feeling the momentum building! As one of my absolute dearest just said to me, “34! the year of kick-assery!”, and so CHEERS!
Alright, get on with it; onto THE QUILT. That why you’re here, yeah?
Like I was saying, the opportunity to make a quilt for RJR’s WHAT SHADE ARE YOU was a no-brainier. The Cotton Supreme Solids are gorgeous, have ALL THE COLORS, and have that nice silky hand that we all know and love from Cotton & Steel and other high quality designer quilting cottons. So yes, yes please. I will absolutely make a quilt out of RJR’s Cotton Supreme Solids and you know what? It may be so dang fun that I make ALL FUTURE QUILTS out of them too. Or at least a lot of them. They’re THAT good. Really.
When I got my colorcard in the mail I did what all good quilters do – SLICED AND DICED. I cut that sucker up and started scooting colors around. I started with a color scheme in my head that I just hadn’t been able to shake and built from there. I used 12 colors and at first I felt lame for only choosing 12 out of the hundreds and especially for a quilt project that was ALL ABOUT COLOR. But as the quilt developed and colors built context into each other, I felt like they took on different lives in the different corners of the quilt. It started to feel like I was working with double the colors!
Here is the list of the 12 colors I chose:
Chalkboard 382
Argento 362
Tourmaline 103
Carrot 131
Sunnyside of the street 379
Kerchief 364
Spearmint 389
Teal 401
Iceberg 377
Paris 235
Gelato 414
Jean Jacket 429
With a total blank slate I asked myself what I’d been dying to make and never made the time. I thought about all my most favorite classic and modern quilts and GEESE is what I kept coming back to. I started sketching some geese and playing with scale. I really loved how the ebb and flow of the geese felt like the ebb and flow of our life right now. With our kiddo having CP, sometimes things feel so stagnant and slow or like we’re moving backwards, and then sometimes it feels like she’s changing and gaining skills at the speed of light. We’ve really noticed that she has a total mind of her own and does things not on our time, not on her therapists time, but on HER time. So these geese were born out of my mama life with our Eleanor.
I really wanted to focus on color development for this quilt so I threw caution to the wind and made a few of my own foundation paper piecing templates. I did close to no actual math for this top (which is totally not my usual quilty way) and really just thought through color context as I went piece to piece. There are three separate blocks here, one with four skinny geese, one with three medium geese, and one with two large geese. I was so excited to see it all come together that I didn’t even mind when I was all set up to baste I realized I still needed to tear all the papers out! Actually I was relieved – who really likes to baste? NOT ME.
I quilted this with simple 1” straight line quilting in a 28wt blueish grey Aurifil. It’s backed in Chalkboard with a few leftover blocks pieced in.
I am so pleased with this quilt and love the mile marker that it is for me in this place and hope that as it hangs in our home it will be a great reminder peace and acceptance and celebration. Thanks so much to RJR for the chance to pitch in along side other amazing quilty friends! Thanks to everyone for stopping by!
Ev Quilts & Co 