School Bus from our Book Country Girl Modern

Each day we have been 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.

This is School Bus.  I love this fun scrappy quilt.  This one took a little bravery on both Kelli’s and my part.

The design process for this started with a quilt block.  Originally I was trying to come up with a jelly roll quilt.  We were thinking about doing a Moda Bake Shop project and for them we are required to use a pre-cut of a Moda fabric line.

My block started simple…The I got thinking about redesigning to use a layer cake and then I thought-how about a fat quarter bundle instead and then I threw out all those ideas.  The blocks I was trying to make just weren’t friendly with the amount of colors in the line but by then, I was hooked on the fabric line.  My blocks just didn’t make good use of a pre-cut.  Then I thought DUH!!!  Why not just go with yardage.  BINGO!!   This is their line Barcelona…but you certainly don’t need a fabric line to make it as it’s all scrappy oranges and blues with a constant yellow and constant background.

After having the initial design I showed Kelli and she added to it.  She said she thought the yellow blocks needed a black square in the center so I changed that.  We ordered the fabric and Kelli took it home.

A week or so later I got a phone call from Kelli.  She said- “I hope you don’t hate me.”  I said- “no.  I don’t”  She said- “I got an idea for the quilt and I just changed it and that’s how it is.”

At this point I didn’t care at all.  We were behind and we just needed a finished quilt top and I needed to get it on the quilting machine.  Besides, I trust Kelli.  When it comes to fabric and designing, she has a good eye.

This is how the quilt came back to me.  Originally the white squares didn’t go out into the border.  There wasn’t the small tiny outer border that she added and the wide border we had originally had on the quilt was gone.  I love the result.



From the picture above you can’t really see the fun that black and gray polka dot gives to the quilt. I just love it.  The colors are very different from my usual and I like that too….

As for the name of the quilt.  In a round about was my Hubby named it….for that story, you’ll have to read the book!

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.