This quilt came about because I finally tried my hand at English paper pieceing (hexies, of course!), and wanted to incorporate some into a quilt.

My idea was to scatter the hexies around, like popcorn popping, on a simple background. For the first time, I made a quilt exclusively using one line of fabric, Waterfront Park by Violet Craft. I made the hexies from a little charm pack that featured the whole line, and then I chose some favorites from the line for the main background and stripes. I love that dark grey with the bridges on it, and the orange and fuscia against it.

For my money (literally and figuratively, haha), the best thing about this quilt is Nikki Maroon's quilting. Each hexie got individual attention, then she did an amazing overall design mixing straight lines and random bursts of paisley. I absolutely love the quilting.

The popcorn quilt is twin-size and will go into my pile of quilts to give away as my nieces, nephew, and boys go off to college.

I made this quilt as part of a swap between the Chicago Modern Quilt Guild (of which I am a proud member) and the Ann Arbor Modern Quilt Guild. We were assigned partners and asked to make a mini quilt we thought they would like. We could try to assess our partners aesthetic through all the modern stalking methods: Pinterest, Instagram, etc.

Mini quilt for Giedra, measuring about 24" square.

My partner Giedra of Thread n Honey seems to have pretty eclectic taste. She likes color and lots of prints, especially Lizzy House. I took these observations and felt free to get creative with her quilt! I used some little drunkard path blocks that I had leftover from another project, and mixed them with some textured lilac solid I had. I wanted to make some letters, as I often want to do these days, so I needed a phrase. I chose "Let's Go Outside", inspired by a picture in Giedra's instagram feed that she captioned, "Summer still-life. #outsideallday". I can tell she values time with her kids and that they love to spend time outdoors.

The letters I pieced for this quilt were pretty minimal. The e's, for instance, were just squares. I wanted to experiment with making the letters in their most basic form, and letting the quilting express the shape of the letter. I didn't feel confident in executing this myself so I hired Nikki Maroon to execute my vision. She also quilted some outdoorsy images like grass, sun, flowers, and wind. I love the quilting on this little quilt so much. Thank you, Nikki. xoxo