Happy Summer!! Denver has reached almost 100 degrees in the past few days!! However, This blog entry is not about the weather, it is about the newest scrappy quilt I have finally finished.

I started this quilt in March and just finished a couple weeks ago. I made this quilt a little differently then from previous quilts I made. I learned a few new techniques from an online class I took on the Crafty website, called “Free Motion Quilting a Sampler” with Leah Day, including some free motion quilting designs. This is the first quilt where I really did more detailed free motion quilting. I did not complete the fancy quilting designs, but with straight and curvy lines, and some stitching in the ditch.

Another new technique I learned and used on this quilt, is that I sewed and quilted separate rectangular patchwork blocks, and attached them all at the end with bindings. This was definitely challenging for sure, and it took good practicing to keep the bindings straight and to have accurate measurements.

Attaching separate quilted blocks is also very useful if you don’t want to baste and pin a whole quilt. Separate blocks also means that you can use different fabrics for the back of each block, which is an advantage if you want to make a reversible quilt.

ALL the fabrics I used to make this quilt were from scraps of fabric I already had. Besides the batting, no new fabrics were bought or used. This also includes the fabrics for the bindings and the back of the quilt. I made sure all the designs and colors of the fabrics I used collaborate well with each other, which I believe they do! This quilt is very diverse, and I used a variety of fabrics including pink, yellow, and blue colors, with flowers, rainbows, skulls, and animal prints, and wildlife.

This was the most challenging quilt I have made yet. With lots of frustrations, tears, cuts, and times where I just wanted to shred it. Binding the quilt blocks was the hardest, but also because it was new to me. But with some breaks to cool down, I re-watched some youtube tutorials and the class on Craftsy, I mastered sewing the quilt blocks, and finished the quilt with the final blue binding that I hand sewed. There are many imperfections to this quilt, but I am very proud of it and I believe it’s the most colorful quilt yet! This sounds a bit cliché, but I believe this quilt resembles peace, love, pride, and the love for nature and our planet.

To learn more about free motion quilting and other quilting techniques, visit https://www.craftsy.com/ and sign up for their classes!