Hundred Acre Wood

Another finished baby quilt.  Added bonus - I had a calm, sunny day to photograph it without having to watch the forecast for a week hoping for a break in the weather.

When I showed the finished quilt to my sister she thought maybe I should name it Beanstalk.  I liked it - and it got me thinking about fairy tales and children stories.  One of the fabrics has bears and rabbits on it - which made me think of Winnie the Pooh.  So I named it Hundred Acre Wood.  It has kind of a forest-y feel.  It fits.

The original ask was for sage green fabrics.  Sage green covers a lot.  At the time my sage bush had mostly silvery-green leaves.  At this time of year they are far darker green on top - more like the darker greens of the quilt.  My Russian sage is still has that silvery color.  

The original backing I picked was a swirly taupe fabric that looked great on its own, but not so much with the quilt.  I also had cut way more strips of fabric for the blocks than I needed - so I stitched some together for the binding and the rest for the a back.  That, with a few leftover chunks of fabric, was enough to cover.  I carefully sandwiched the quilt to stagger the seams on the front and the back.  There were still a few spots that the needle or foot hit too many layers and caused problems while quilting it.

 

The quilt front and back went together nicely but the sandwiched quilt sat for longer than anticipated.  I was stymied how to quilt those stepped squares.  The designs I worked out on paper didn't look right on the quilt either from the size or the way the quilt behaved when stitching it.  I figured on an all-over design which I hated before I went more than six inches.   Ugh.

But I refused to move onto another project until this was done.  It had a deadline in July.  

Eventually I pulled out my walking foot to stitch-in-the-ditch around all the diamonds with the thought of doing echos around that.  Simply starting helped.  The echo design was quickly abandoned, too.  If I wasn't very accurate, it was going to make everything look wonky.  I decided on waves in the diamonds and then loops over the white.  

The stitch-in-the-ditch was both good and bad:  it got me started and helped tack down the quilt.  It also was my bane for puckers as my other quilting met up with it.  Oh, well.

I'm pleased with the result.  I really like the colors.  It squared up nicely.  And it's done on time. 

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