Almost Amish and Stash Report

Each day for the next 11 days I’ll be featuring one of our quilts from our book Country Girl Modern.  We’ll tell you the back story on each of the quilts over the course of a few days. If you are interested in pre-ordering our book, you can find that information here.

Today’s feature quilt is Almost Amish.

I am not a person who remembers my dreams…especially not lately.  I think I am just too tired when I go to bed.  When I do remember them they are always a miss-mash of things that happened over the course of a few days that are completely unrelated but come together in a dream in a way I never could believe.  Often times, for me, quilt designing is like that.

Yesterday’s quilt, Rainbow Connection was that way and today’s quilt, Almost Amish is that way too.

Two years ago in the fall Kelli and I were asked by C&T Publishing if we wanted to be part of Amish style quilt book.  They were hoping to revisit Amish style quilts and change them up a bit.  I liked the idea but at the time our plate was really fun and the turn around time was very fast paced even for us.  The idea always stuck with me though….I love the idea of using solids only.  I loved the idea of jazzing up an Amish style quilt.

We were looking for a few easy quilts to include to the book because we know you are all like us, wanting easy but nice quilts to give away as gifts or for charity projects.  We also know that you like us are always on the look out for good guy quilts.

I ended up coming up with this quilt drawing, thinking we’d use some solids like Amish Quilts only change up the black to a different color…we’d make the quilt easy construction and in colors that could be guy friendly.  I showed the drawing to Kelli…she of course razzed me because it was in  a barn raising setting.  It’s my favorite quilt block setting!

We got out our Moda Bella Solids Color Card and tried to pick colors that would coordinate together.

With all of these to choose from the task was overwhelming.  Getting the colors right something we really wanted to do.

That’s when I remembered seeing a piece of fabric that I thought would be wonderful for a backing and perfect to help us be able to select the colors for the top of the quilt.

We ordered this fabric and used it as a guide to select the colors for the top of the quilt.  WOW.  Having this fabric as a color guide was wonderful and the color selecting process so much easier.  We could look at the colors in the fabric and see that they coordinated wonderfully so knew they would coordinate and look great on the top too.  It was a great confidence builder and I highly recommend the process.

Once the fabric was ordered it sat here.  Kelli was busy wedding planning and was sewing some of the more difficult quits in between all that she had going on.  I was busy quilting the quilts that we already had completed.  I was tired of the quilt machine and grabbed this and secretly started sewing on it.

Kelli started lamenting that we were never going to get all these quilts finished in time.  At that point we still had six to sew and we originally made 14.

Over the course of two days of secret sewing I finished the top.  Then when Kelli came home I surprised her by having the quilt top completely finished.  She was so happy with me!!

This one was on the frame and quilted it no time at all.  By far it the the quickest quilt in the book that we completed.

Deciding on the binding color was easy.  We did want it to be more “boy looking” on top.  We wanted the colors to pop so using the same brown wasn’t an option for us.  We liked the turquoise and decided to go with it.

If you have a bunch of scraps you want to use up, this quilt could easily work for you.  Pick a color for the background and use the scraps for the squares that make the diagonal.  If you have a kids who loves sports like the Iowa Hawkeyes, use scrappy whites as the background with yellow and black as the colors in the blocks.  It would make a fun two color quilt too.  If you have a toddler who is moving to a “big kid” bed, shop with them and have them pick out their favorite novelty print for the backing and purchase coordinating fabric to make the top.  They’ll love the quilt for sure.   The possibilities for the use of this pattern are endless.

This is just one of the eleven quilts in our book.  If you’d like to order an autographed copy of our book check out this link to learn how to order it.  Stop back tomorrow and we’ll feature another quilt from the book.

…and as far as my stash report goes…nothing in.  Nothing out.

Just to make the stash report official, here’s the stats.

Used this week… 0 yards.

Used to date…  0 yards.

Check out Patchwork Times for more stash reports.  Hopefully someone there has a little more excitement going on in their sewing room.