Flashback Friday -- A Quilt Story

"Gideon's Kaleidoscope" -- all bundled up and ready to send. 

For today's flashback, I thought I'd go back in time to the beginning of the summer when I first started working on a quilt for my good friend, April.  By going over the process for making this particular quilt, I think it will highlight what my methods are for making quilts in general. 

Whenever I'm making a quilt for someone, I try REALLY hard to make it "match" who they are.  If that makes sense.  Whether that be through color palette, quilt pattern, fabric choices -- or hopefully all of the above -- I take everything into consideration as I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to make.  Once I get a flash of inspiration -- usually through one of those mediums above, everything seems to just fall into place and I can piece away to my heart's content and then quilt it and bind it and send it away where my greatest joy comes in hoping that the quilt will actually be used.  :)  Yes, the hand-quilting makes it heirloom quality, and sure, I like to think of it as a work of art, but it is a QUILT.  And quilts should be used.  And that's my opinion on that!  Hahaha.

But back to baby Gideon's quilt.  With this particular gift, the inspiration came from a specific swatch of fabric.  As soon as I saw it, it just screamed April to me.  Like I said before, I really try to make the quilts match who they go to, and since April's style {or at least my interpretation of it} is slightly vintage-y, with a touch of trendy and a sprinkling of whimsy, while being colorful and classy and non-boring, I thought this fabric would be perfect in an old-school kaleidoscope pattern using other fabrics pulled to coordinate with the inspiration piece. 

Inspiration piece unfurled on the bottom there.  The funny thing was that when I was asking the kids for their feedback on if they thought this fabric looked like April, Ethan was the only one to respond and he said, "Yeah -- it looks like something she would have as a dress."  Hahahaha.  How funny is that??  I love that he was my sounding board.  :)

I was originally going to use a background of white or gray, but when I auditioned them with the other fabrics, it just didn't look like the right combination for a baby quilt .  When I found a piece of light blue fabric in my hutch leftover from another quilting project, I knew right away that it was the PERFECT touch to make the quilt just right for a cute little baby boy.

After cutting all the pieces out and sewing them together, I was left trying to figure out what to use for the back.  Because the front had so much going on, I felt like the backing fabric needed to balance it out somehow.  The aviation print I found on a solid navy background was just the right piece to make the whole quilt work.  

Front {I found the pattern and tutorial at Don't Call Me Betsy.}

Back {Robert Kaufman's "Patriots"}

Close-up of the planes.  :)

I quilted the background diamonds and the center squares and then bound it all in Kona Charcoal {my second favorite shade of Kona gray -- Ash is my first favorite} and washed it with Dreft and dried it in the dryer.  Seeing it all crinkly and wrinkly when it's done is my favorite part of the whole process.  :)  So there you have it -- How I Make a Quilt.  I love every part of the process!  Except for the binding.  I hate doing the binding SO much and I don't know why.  Hahaha.  It's not that hard and it doesn't take that long and it's LITERALLY the last thing to do to finish off the quilt, but it just sends my impatience levels through the roof. Oh well!  That's the story, morning glory.  The making of a quilt by me.