First, thank you for all the house congratulations! I very much appreciate all the warm wishes. We’re still taking our time unpacking. Hopefully, we’ll feel completely settled soon (and I can show off my sewing space!)
Until then, I have another baby girl quilt to share. I gave a little sneak peek of it a few weeks ago with this picture:

And I’ve talked about it before here but you haven’t seen the final thing. Are you ready?

Ta-da! I made it for a semi-cousin (close friend of my husband’s family) – I knew from the grapevine that she was going with coral and gold with a hint of black for the nursery. And, I must say, it was nice to work with coral more than pink.

I started with this inspiration. I pieced the two sides with random-ish sized strings; one lighter side and one darker side. Then I laid both sides on the floor, overlapping slightly, and drew a curve. I cut along the drawn line with scissors, then marked an indicator dash every few inches to be able to line up and pin the curve accurately. This is very similar to the improv curve method in Sherri Lynn Wood’s book: The Improv Handbook for Modern Quilters. (I just used scissors rather than a rotary cutter, and the pieces were huge).

After piecing, it came time to decide on a backing. I went to my awesome local quilt shop and after hemming, hawing, and petting all the pretty fabrics, landed about this unicorn print by Sara Lawson. Perfect, right?

Basting. There’s really never too much to say about basting, is there? You kick on some tunes, change into super comfy stretch pants, and just go for it. At least it was baby sized…

Then comes the super fun and kind of hard part — how to quilt it. I had found some gold metallic thread at the LQS while shopping for the backing, and that seemed to be the perfect choice. However, I’ve used metallic thread before, and it is not really fond of being intensely free motion quilted. I needed something straightforward and simple (so the thread wouldn’t break a jillion times) but still interesting. Talking it over with my husband, he suggested the triangle paisley I did on this quilt. Genius! The angles would counteract a little of the sweetness, and the metallic thread could hold up.

At first the thread did break a few times, then I accidentally hit on the secret: Leave my stitch length at 2. I’m not sure at all why this worked, or if it was just merely a coincidence, but I left my stitch length dial alone for the remainder of the quilt with zero problems. None. I’ll have to do some more experimenting to see if this is truly correlative, but if you’re having trouble with metallic thread, give it a try!

I bound it in a black sketchy print. I’m not sure if it was actually Architextures, or the Timeless Treasure Sketch (I didn’t have the selvedge anymore), but it compliments it nicely.
The quilt has now made it’s way home to the precious little girl, and I can cross another baby quilt off the list.
