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!!!)