Bo’s Mountains

When I heard that our friends, Ruth and Austin, were expecting their first son, I knew that I wanted to make him a quilt.  I asked Ruth to be thinking about color combinations and to have a look around on the internet for pattern ideas that she liked.

She responded with the colors blue, red and gold and found a very simple, sweet pattern that she liked.  Her comment was that “they loved mountains” and that was why it had appealed to her.

I started the quilt in the usual way by pulling way too many fabrics out of the box and then weeding them down to the proper number…..

Now I had to figure out the size of the flying geese (aka mountains).    I have to say that I was NOT at my brightest and best during this process and it ended up being a lot of trial and error, but eventually I had the strip put together……

As I had sewed each triangle, I ended up with “bonus” triangles that had been dutifully sewn into more half-square triangles and then into more geese…..

My thought was to include these geese somewhere in the body of the quilt, but I simply couldn’t find an arrangement that I liked……

OR…..

so I moved back to the original design……

I wanted to keep the strips as straight as possible so I used my 1/4 inch foot to do the piecing.  I LOVE the little edge that guides the fabric….

I then spent time debating about whether or not to add a border, but eventually decided to leave it simple.

After putting together the backing (while STILL trying to use the extra flying geese), I was ready to quilt.  Since I wasn’t sure exactly how I wanted to quilt it, I followed the advice that I always give to my classes and started with what I knew……   straight lines down the mountain/geese backgrounds…..

But where to go next……  I knew that the family loved hiking and especially fishing and I was sure that Bo would spend much of his life participating in these activities, so I felt that his quilt had to include references to those things.   After much thought I decided to split the larger section into strips and quilt each one with a different design, starting with mountains……

…..followed by a line of trees……

…..a stream of trout……

….a field of flowers……

….and ending with a few more trees.

I was happy with the back……

….happy with the finished quilt……

….and even happier when I got to present it to the boy himself…..

Michael and I wish only the best to this very special family…..

(Now I just have to figure out what to do with those extra flying geese!!!)