mama urchin

Last year one of the quilts in our family room spent a good deal of time outside . This wasn’t a problem really but the quilt is made of flannel and not so summery. Plus, since we use it in the family room — in fact the urchins fight over it but that is another post — I didn’t really want it getting too dirty. Sometime last spring I was at a local shop and bought a little stack of fat quarters. Around the same time I saw Fiona‘s modern cross quilt and wanted to make something similar. As I was laying out the quilt I noticed if I put the striped cross in the middle it looked a lot like the cross at the end of a swimming pool lane.

The colors lent themselves to a pool feeling too so I just went with it. I like how all the squares look like tiles and how the border looks like steps. There were small bits left from cutting the squares so I pieced them together to make one long strip for the back, a lane line if you will, and surrounded the strip with the dark teal kona cotton. I wanted the back to be pretty dark so it won’t get too grass-stained.

I had a local woman who has one of those fancy computerized quilting machines quilt it for me and she used a variegated blue thread and a wave pattern. Then the poor quilt sat forever in the to-be-finished pile waiting for the binding. I don’t mind hand-stitching binding but I also wouldn’t say I like it. So finally I reasoned with myself, this particular quilt is meant to be tossed around on the ground. It will most likely get covered in chicken salad and pollen. It is okay to sew the binding on the machine. So that’s what I did. I don’t like the way it looks as much as a hand sewn binding but now it’s done, and just in time as we’re having a bit of a warm spell. Spring is coming friends.