New Beginnings Final Edition

My New Beginnings Mini Quilt Swap project is finally finished and on its way. I am very happy with the way this quilt turned out. I am calling it Picket Fence. For some reason it just feels like I am looking through a picket fence to see the pretty flowers on the other side. The New Beginnings part of it is the little tree that is blooming where it is planted right in the fence row.



I really struggled with this quilt because I knew what I was going to make from the day I saw the announcement for the swap. You may recall seeing New Beginnings v.1. It is bright and green and orange and blue. I made the first prototype just to see how it would all work together. I really liked it and was ready to make one the right size for this swap. But then when I received the information about my partner I realized that the colors would NOT work. There was very little information available about my partner. In fact the only information I had was that she liked red, gold and black. I spent weeks playing with fabric and every time I knew what to do, it wasn't red, gold or black. Finally, I remembered some scraps I had from my ME quilt. I was able to pull the ones that were mostly red, gold and black.

I put together a simple stacked coins pattern using a slightly off-white kona. (The ME fabrics are a Mary Engelbreit design for Moda from a number of years ago.) I liked it, but I was still stuck on putting my sprouting tree on it. That lead to a long discussion with my mother and then a series of on-line posts and requests. The consensus was Tree!


Better yet, the lovely Buttoncounter on Flickr suggested quilting in black thread and adding leaves. That suggestion resonated and I finally could see my through to the end of the quilt.

This is a bit of a close up of the tree. I did it using the fused, raw-edge applique method. I stitched around it with a machine blanket stitch to make sure it was secure. Then I used a double strand of black quilters cotton to quilt around the tree.

Next came the leaves. They were a simple heart shape, again quilted in black cotton.


This picture shows the hand quilting. I came back in with the machine and stitched the straight lines for the picket fence with a white thread.

Here you can see the whole back of the quilt. I had to finish the machine stitching in a hurry since I was going to be leaving town for a few days and wouldn't have time to get it in the mail if I waited. It wasn't until I was taking the final pictures that I realized the last two lines I stitched were off and make the first perfectly square quilt I ever made look crooked. Sob! Oh well, It is just the pickets the dog uses to get in and out of the yard, right???

So Ta Da! My wee quilt is on its way to its new home. I surely do hope its new owner loves it. This one was very hard to part with.

Some final details. The quilt measures approximately 18 x 22 inches. It is made with a Mary Engelbriet design for Moda. The background and backing are Kona. The applique tree is a piece of black cotton from my stash. Quilting is a combination of hand and machine work. The binding is a black and white woven cotton check. It is hand stitched on the back.

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