Bright!

Midwinter Dream Quilt

When the snow gets deep and the skies are grey, I'm not the only one who dreams of summer.

Plan A for the Midwinter quilt

This quilt project started several years ago when my sister gave me a foot tall stack of batik fat quarters as a Christmas gift.  My world, and especially my appliqué, brightened up considerably.  As I've collected bright batiks, I've put some aside for this project. Now they've reached an acceptable level of curing-on-the-shelf, so in the dark ages of January I started piecing.

Originally we just wanted an easy to piece design that would showcase the intense colors of batiks.  I’d seen a Finnish quilt online with a gorgeous array of bright fabrics, but it was far more complex than I wanted to tackle in a big quilt, so this quilt is only somewhat inspired by that one, mostly in the borders. 

The blocks of the quilt center are a simple log-cabin style square.  The zig-zag border is cut from a pieced panel of stripes.                                                                                                                                                                 

blocks ready for piecing

                                        

                                                                             

First block begins

I just have to remember which way I'm rotating the blocks as I add pieces

a finished block, pressed and "squared up" but skewed on the greid in the background.

These are the strips which will become stripes for the border

And the striped panel cut into blocks.

and the border begins to take shape.

The plan is to finish this in time to have it quilted by midsummer.  Bright days ahead!