The birthday quilt

A while ago...like WAY back...like I've almost run out the statute of limitations on being able to blog about it...I made a quilt as a birthday present for a friend of mine.  This is no ordinary friends and this was no ordinary quilt.  Let's just say I pulled out the Tula Pink for this one.  And not any Tula Pink -- some seriously OOP Tula.  There were fabrics from "The Birds and the Bees" in there and some prints from "Parisville."  You know, long hoarded stuff that you like to pull out of the well-shaded, air-tight, plastic bins to look at and pet every once in a while.

This was step one

I knew I needed to use a pattern where there would be large swaths of the prints on view -- Tula's focal fabrics deserve nothing less.  But there also needed to be order in all the chaos -- some of her fabrics have a lot going on in a small space.  It also needed to be fast -- I was on a birthday deadline you know!  I settled on this grid of squares of varying sizes.

Used my preferred method of "selected random placement"

I worked out the quilt in halves.  I made sure there was a lot of variety and no repeats in the top and then again in the bottom.  I tried to make sure the fabrics appeared no more than once in each row and column per half.  Once the layout was checked - the sewing commenced.

Please excuse the top fluff puff of my dog's head.  I like to pretend he's admiring it.

The top actually came together pretty quickly -- I was surprised.  I guess the larger scale - which I typically don't do - makes a massive difference.  I tend toward finicky small pieces cuz I like a challenge but I may need to begin rethinking that strategy.

Finito!

And not too long after that we had a finished product.  I kept the quilting simple and sewed lines a quarter-inch on either side of each seam in a light purple thread.  It's super soft and drapey and really purpley (squeee!).

I really like these sort of hidden treasures she puts in her fabrics

And of course the requisite "Quilt - Fully laid out" shot had to be taken!

You can pretty tell how long ago this was because it looks like late winter/early spring. All this colour made me feel springy though.

And the back is purpley too!

For the back I used a large piece of a print from Amy Butler's Love that I had laying around and supplemented it with yardage of Chain-mail from Tula's Elizabeth line.  Confession, I wasn't that sold on that chain-mail fabric when I first got it so I didn't get that much.  After I used it here I fell in love with it and bought about three more metres.  Lol.

Fun label!

I'm not that great at labelling my quilts so I got these pre-made ones and just add the date to them with a micron pen.  Perfect!

All ready to gift!