Watercolor Quilt

I just finished the last few inches of binding on this quilt this morning.  The colors are so beautiful, I think, in this quilt.  I am not a fan of winter, so I love working on a quilt with spring and summer colors in January.  All I can think of is watercolor paints when I see the colors.  I made this quilt top in June 2013 shortly after I won the Scrap Crazy Templates from the Creative Grids Facebook page.  I was so happy to win something!  That doesn't happen to me very often.  The directions with the templates give very good instructions on how to use them to cut your fabric up, and one of the best ways that I like to use them is for layer cakes.  There is almost no waste.  You will see from my pictures below that I cut up the 10" layer cake squares, actually modified the cutting directions a little so that I would have that strip around 1" left at the top of my layer cake.  I used those narrow strips in my pieced border.  The little baggie shows the small amount of fabric that was discarded.  I LOVE that!!

I made 40 Scrap Crazy squares and designed the layout myself.  I decided to piece 4 of the squares together to make 9 big squares.  The 4 remaining individual squares went into the corners.  I also designed the border myself using those little approximately 1" strips to add interest and color.

The layer cake I used was called Bali Batiks - Lights.  There were 40 squares with no duplicates, so a wonderful variety of colors and prints.  The background sashing, border, and binding fabric is a very light green and white print.  The back is a solid pink.  It seems rather feminine to me, so pretty!

I quilted this on the longarm over the last week using the pantograph Novaya Zhizn with white OmniThread.  Yes, I'm not sure how to correctly pronounce that either, but I wanted to use it because it is a vine/leaf pattern, and the batik fabric has a lot of botanical prints in it, so it seemed like a perfect choice.  I am very happy with the finished quilt!

The gallery below shows the process of making this one.

I hope you enjoyed that.  You probably also learned some things about me - I don't like winter, I like to use up every inch of fabric if possible without throwing it away, and I love using my Scrap Crazy Templates.  I have a third quilt in the works using them again. 

Enough typing for now, my sewing machine is waiting for me!  Have a great day!