Taadaa daa! :: Nana quilt

Last week I gave a little update on where my knitting projects are up to. While April was (and May is turning out to be) knitty, the craft that has really had my interest for the last little while is quilting. I'm in love. With the fabrics, the pattern, the techniques - everything. And of course I have a whole bunch of projects underway, but today I want to share a finished one - the Nana quilt I made for my mum.

My mum has been either my teacher or my inspiration in nearly ever crafty adventure I've taken - all the way from her patience when we were little playing with her fabric scraps, buttons and beads all the way through to us going on quilt camp together last year. She is always making quilts for family and friends ( and friends of family), so when we found out Amelia was on the way - and mum was going to be a nana - I knew I wanted to make her a special quilt to mark the occasion.

After making my first quilt - the scrap vomit - I was still hooked on the 2.5" squares (let's be honest - I still am!) so I wanted something scrappy but with some order, like the scrap vomit but different. I decided on an all over lattice across those lovely scraps.

Most of the quilt top was pieced during the second half of my pregnancy. I sewed like a crazy lady - each day I was convinced I would wake up the next morning too big to sit at the machine. I took a little bit of a different approach to the fabric selection than I did in the scrap vomit quilt - this is full of pretty prints from my stash, from moda candy charm packs, from my friend (especially Angie & Michelle) and from mum herself. There are flowers and dots, a couple of Elvis prints, some ponies and cats. So many cats. Each of the 49 blocks has at least one cat in it, except for the very first block I made.

Working on this quilt was a great lesson in 'volume' - the print that I chose for the lattice contrasted really well with a lot of my scraps, so I thought it would work as 'low volume'. Putting the blocks together though, something really obvious became, well, obvious. It doesn't matter how light (or dark) a fabric is when you look at it - only how much lighter or darker than the fabrics around it. While I did try to put darker fabrics around it, overal my lattice didn't quite stand out as much as I wanted. I do still love the effect though - the pattern and order I wanted is there if you look, just in a more subtle way than I had planned.

I love the back as much as the front. I used Kate Spain raindrops (from the range Sunnyside) and Tilda tea cups, and spelled out nana using the free letters from the moda blog.

This shot of the back show the quilting quite nicely. Raylee from as Sunflower Quilting helped me choose the swirly design, which we thought looks a bit like steam coming up from those cups of tea, and did an excellent job quilting it, even managing to squeeze it in so that I would have time to bind before we went to visit mum at Easter.

I decided that such a special quilt needed a super special label too, so I used a gorgeous embroidery pattern, Russian Dolls by A Little Sweetness, to make three generations of little stitched matryoshkas. I'm so happy with how it came out.

I loved making every single bit of this quilt, and I loved that it felt like Amelia and I made it together. I hope mum has many coomfy cups of tea under it =)