I could not be more thrilled with how Courtney’s quilt turned out. It’s the perfect color pallete for her personality (and her room) – it’s bright, it’s sunny and it’s heavy on the purple – her favorite color! The quilt top itself was super easy to make. I was drawn to this fabric line for the colors and the spring like feel, I think I bought it in February and I was definitely channeling some spring. The jelly roll quilt 1600 is crazy easy to make and doesn’t take long – you sew, you chop, you sew, you chop and on and on and on – but that alone wasn’t enough for a twin size quilt. I went ahead and bought a charm pack (precut 5×5 squares) to make the flying geese around the edges. I added some white sashing and voila, my largest quilt to date!
At my Atlanta Modern Quilt Guild meeting a couple of months ago, a woman showed a quilt she’d made using flannel on the back, “good flannel” she said. I went ahead and bought some good flannel (aka expensive) while it was on sale at QuiltHome.com for the back. They were super helpful in helping me match the right colored back to the front and I’m THRILLED with how it looks.
Because this was my largest quilt to date, I wanted to go ahead and try it on a long arm machine. A local sewing machine store has one here that you can rent and I decided to give that a go. I learned a lot by using it. For example, I learned that we’d loaded it wrong and that it’s super important to drop the presser foot or you’ll spend 30 minutes taking stitches out… I used a meandering stitch on the top, which I think was perfect for my first long arm experience. There’s no right or wrong and you can’t really mess anything up.
I also wanted to leave a little note for Courtney on the bottom and that was crazy easy to do on the long arm…. 
Lastly, I went ahead and added a purple on purple polka dot binding. I wanted to incorporate more purple (favorite color and all) but almost any color for the border would have worked.
I’m really thrilled with this quilt, as simple as it was. I love how the geese add a little something to the top and how all the colors are just so happy together. I really hope that Courtney enjoys years and years under her new quilt and as she grows up, she’ll always think of me when she cuddles up with a good book and a cup of tea.
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