Connections Quilt

I mentioned in our first post that I sometimes do design work for Fabri-Quilt. This quilt is one such example. They asked for a quilt that showed off some of their flannel line. This is what I came up with.

I often use EQ7 to design my patterns. Sometimes I will start with a sketch or an inspiration from somewhere else, but I use the quilt design program to test out my ideas and draft my designs. The image you see above is the image I sent to the people at Fabri-Quilt to show them my idea for the quilt. I use this sort of image to establish a design, determine fabric placement, create an arrangement of blocks, and figure yardage. 

I don't always design so precisely. If I'm doing a design as a commission, this is the easiest way I have found to give the person an idea of what I have in mind. They can visualize what I see in my head a whole lot better when I hand them an image than if I try to explain what I see in my mind. 

If I am designing something that doesn't need to conserve fabric and nobody is relying on me to do it right the first time, I do like to chop into fabric. I like to chop, sew, repeat quite a bit. I have a post in the works about a pair of quilts I made for friends of ours with twins that was a much more freestyle approach to quilting.  

This quilt went together pretty quickly. Basically, it's a simple log cabin quilt with one ring of pieced "logs". The quilting on this quilt was rather simple, too. You can see in the photo above I echo-quilted the red pieces 1/4" from the outside of them. The blue part is probably my favorite, though. I used my walking foot to create an "x" in each of the legs of the cross. I think it came out looking like a star. It is definitely a quilting method I will use again. 

And is my baby adorable or what? Quilts are cool and all, but they are 400 times better with a cute baby sitting on them.  

-Jessica