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……
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……
….and ending with a few more trees.
….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!!!)
2 thoughts on “Bo’s Mountains”
That is some super impressive trout quilting!
“and the geese flew over the mountain… to see hwat they could see!” Luv the geese but simple is probably better. I did a delectable mountain wedding quilt for our nephew. Very similar colouring! So fun to quilt all that into the quilt. great job!!!