In August 2010, I went fabric shopping with my mother-in-law to pick out fabrics for a lap quilt that I planned to make for her and my father-in-law. I had talked to them in advance, and they had agreed on a color palette. It was a lot of fun to go fabric shopping and help start to take their vision of an early autumn color palette and turn it into a quilt.
Fall is Coming – Initial Fabric Pull
In particular, my mother-in-law was drawn to the orange and green ginko leaf prints. I am so glad we went shopping together because getting to pick up on details like the fabrics she was really drawn to and petted the most in person helped inform my design decisions for the quilt. I chose to make the quilt pattern “Four Square” out of Cozy Modern Quilts (non-affiliate link). The pattern starts by making a lot of simple courthouse steps blocks…
Fall is Coming – Courthouse Steps Blocks
The more blocks I made, the more I wanted to keep making. So I bought more fabric and the courthouse steps blocks kept multiplying. Eventually I ended up with 56 blocks and my helpful quilt inspector (Puppy the cat) approved.
Fall is Coming – 56 Courthouse Steps Blocks
After piecing all the blocks, the next step was to slice them all into quarters. Gulp. After cutting the first couple, it got easier to do.
Fall is Coming – Cutting Blocks
Figuring out the layout of the quilt was the next challenge. First I tried a random approach:
Fall is Coming – Layout Option 1
I wasn’t sold on the layout, so I tried again, this time focusing on a green to orange transition, much like the way the season seems to progress in early autumn.
Fall is Coming – Final Layout
At this point, the quilt was much larger than a normal lap sized quilt, so I added a final border of the green and orange ginko leaves to have it finish out with nice drape for their queen sized bed (after checking in to make sure they would enjoy having the quilt on their bed!).
Fall is Coming – Returned from Longarmer
I was still in my infancy of exploring quilting my own quilts at this time via a walking foot on my small domestic machine (~5 inch throat space), so I sent this large quilt off to Tennessee to a long arm quilter that I knew and trusted. She quilted an all over oak leaf pattern which seemed to compliment the design idea for the quilt very nicely. I was excited when it came back, and of course Puppy had to help me evaluate it.
Fall is Coming – Matching Binding
Another first in this quilt for me was working to match the binding to the outer border. I was really pleased with how it came together!
Fall is Coming
I was lucky to be able to deliver Fall is Coming in person to my in laws on February 5, 2011 (5 years ago almost to the day)! My in laws definitely appreciate the quilt, and I love hearing how they like to rotate the quilt to look down at their feet and see predominantly green or orange.
Looking back at these old project because of Throwback Thursday is so enlightening! I have seen in the past that I jumped into designing my own patterns easily and early on in my journey. And while this quilt follows a pattern, I think I can see the start of my obsession with color ombre here.
Linking up with Throwback Thursday.
I like seeing how it developed. I love a good colourwash/ombre effect too.
A gorgeous quilt and a great story on how it came to be!
A beautiful quilt and story to go along with it.
Excellent quilt and read 🙂 Definitely ‘Throwback Thursday’ worthy!
I love the layout you ended up picking for the quilt. It really does capture the transition from summer into fall. That transition is one of my favorite times of year. And very cool you got to pick the fabrics out with your mother in law. Puppy looks so tiny and young 🙂
Yes! I was going to say that about your layout – ombre! You were just getting going with that! What a wonderful BIG quilt and it looks so nice on the bed! The picture of you and puppy is adorable!
This is a gorgeous quilt and love the throwback pic of you! 🙂
Love the layout you chose. Very pretty!
The comparison between the two layouts is wonderful – The layout you selected is the perfect choice. I love the transition and development of color in the fall which is mimicked so well here. Great story Yvonne.
Were you already a blogger then? If not, kudos for taking pictures. It’s so nice to be able to see the process you went through to create this gorgeous quilt! I love Fall colours!
Good Morning Yvonne! These are gorgeous fabrics that the two of you chose for this quilt. Then to cut the blocks up and rearrange them the way that you did, turned out to make an even more spectacular and beautiful quilt. Thank you for sharing a step back in time with us, I know that I truly enjoyed it! Today a friend is coming over and we are going to be sewing together some of the blocks that you posted yesterday. I can not post pictures though, our main computer crashed and my old ancient lap top does not let me post pictures or even hear sounds. LOL. Thank You for sharing all that you do! Have a fantastic creative day!
What a great quilt! I love the mix of batiks and prints and how you transitioned the colors across the quilt. The opposite border colors and the matching binding really adds to it also! Great TBT!
Oh, my. When I looked at the first pictures for this quilt, I thought, “Well that’s a nice quilt.” I also thought I might even have made one from a similar pattern. And then you started slicing up those squares and it just came to life! I think I see the beginnings of your Tessellating Leaves quilt here, which was one of the first quilts I ever viewed on your site. Thanks for sharing it on the (almost) anniversary of gifting it. For some reason, it makes me giggle to think of your in-laws rotating it and looking down at their feet to see the color change.
a great quilt of its time, but boy hasn’t your style changed
I really like this, especially how it goes from green to orange. Great job.
You know a quilt is going to be good when you don’t want to cut up the base block because it’s already fab.Sort of like the cookie dough tasting awesome even before you bake it. Each step of the evolution of this quilt saw it getting better and better! I really like the colour gradiation you achieved.Thanks for linking up with Throwback Thursday @ A Quarter Inch from the Edge!
I had so much to say and then was distracted by the fact that you have a cat named Puppy. I absolutely love it! I’m one of those people who goes to a friend’s house or a party and immediately befriends the cats or dogs rather than the actual people. Lol. So needless to say, I’m daydreaming about hanging out with Puppy while admiring your quilt. I love both the layouts, but I agree that the gradient effect you have is stunning. And I love that the recipients shift the quilt around depending on what they want to see at their feet. 🙂
Wow, what an absolutely neat quilt! I love the transition in the colors and the fact that you even followed through with your binding! Inspiring! You are so smart for recording pictures of the process. Thanks for sharing.
When I learned to quilt I was told to spread the colours around in the quilt like in your first layout. I did that many times until I made a quilt where doing that looked terrible. Grouping the blocks into colour blocks made it look much better. Your quilt looks good both ways but it is more interesting in the final version. I love the photo of you and puppy (sometimes I call my cat Benni puppy as well)
This is gorgeous! I love how you took the fabrics your MIL loved and created a design that you loved.
I remembered this quilt, but it was so much fun seeing all those in-progress shots.
nicely done! Luv the colour split!