Improv Quilt

If you follow Mom and me on Instagram you will see all the projects we are currently working on. This quilt was started before we moved and I can not believe this but I finished it up the last two days and actually photographed it to show you immediately -- WHAT!!! Craziness people. 

I have a Pinterest board where collect all sorts of awesome quilts I find. And I found myself pinning a lot of these improv quilts. So with a healthy stash of Rowan fabrics Shot Cottons (purchased from Purl Soho) I decided to give it a try. 

Improving is WORK. Now I know part of my problem was working from uncut pieces of fabric - scraps would make this process much, much faster. I basically had to turn all this gorgeous fabric into scraps and then try and then create a random quilt without feeling like I was forcing a design. 

It's a super bright and happy quilt. And because creating the top didn't take long enough I decided to do quilting every 1/3 inch with Dove Aurifil thread. I continue to not know why I do these things to myself. But I think it's because I really, really love it even though I really, really dislike how long it takes to finish it! 

The back and binding are chambray from Imaginegnats shop. Seriously don't follow the link unless you plan to purchase fabric... gorgeous stuff. 

This puppy will be in heavy rotation- the kids were doing summersaults on it before I could attach the binding. 

Quilt- Swiss Army Style

I have slowly, so slowly, but surely tried to make quilts for everyone in my family. I have been knocking around ideas for this guy's quilt for quite awhile now. He's my big boy and he travels a lot, to far away places. I hate to saddle people with "things" if it is not convenient to their lives but I finally just had to do it and I'm glad I did. Cause, look at that face. Yes, I know that he is all grown up, but yikes, it seriously seems like yesterday that this man was only seven.

 This is my take on the old Swiss Army Blankets. I love those things and thought why not interpret it into a quilt? Since my son is 6'2" I made it long. Maybe ridiculously long, but I wanted him to be warm. I think it ended up over 8 feet. Silly me, I didn't measure but you can see when he holds it up it still drags the ground. When they originally produced the wool army blankets, the maker embroidered their initials and the year made on the blanket in the lower left corner. My twist on that was to embroider his initials and the year in the same corner. Of course I forgot to get a picture of that, because I waited until the day before he left to take the pictures and I may or may not have been close to boo hooing.

 I used Kona Cotton in white, coal and cardinal to piece the quilt and quilted the many, many mostly straight lines in Aurifil 50 weight Dove Grey. I kept the back simple with the same fabrics.

I love that he wrote me a few days after he left to let me know that the length of the quilt was the best part, and it was in fact keeping him warm. That's the whole point, isn't it?