A Picnic Quilt

And start with something you love!

It might be a batik fabric, like this one.  Perhaps it’s the wildly and bright-colored pastel print. That fabric choice made this quilt unique and reversible in a fun and quirky sorta way, I’d guess you’d say.  (Well, I just did, didn’t I?!)

Maybe you really fell in love with a certain pattern.  Threads. (Oh yeah!) Or perhaps a particular style.  Or just for a particular design motif.  Whatever it is, begin with the things you love.  When I first began quilting, I played with small items, like napkins, jackets, and then on to smaller quilts like table runners, or this ‘picnic’ size. 

The quilting motif is just a simple daisy, done in green, variegated thread and a bunch of loops de loops thrown in.  

 I chose to quilt with YLI Variations, a 35 weight, polyester thread.  

Once finished with the initial ‘big daisy’ motif,  I overquilted with a smaller flower, daisy-like motif, in a coordinating orange thread, also a YLI Quilting thread, but in cotton.  (I have a bunch I want to use up!).  

Lots of wide-open spaces (humming Dixie Chicks song here “Wide Open Spaces.”)  Seriously, you could easily put several different quilting motifs on a piece like this.  I chose basically three.  And the best news?  With a fabric print like this batik, your quilting is not going to show very much! Even better!  What a great way to practice, sharpening up your skills, trying out new motifs, without alot of risk!  Keep the motifs a bit bigger, and you will have less time into the quilt. 

As you can see, this is not what you would call a ‘pieced’ quilt.  Just a whole piece of fabric, with a very simple, pieced border.  Great!  Because that border provides a wonderful springboard to practice your free motion quilting, with a bit more at risk, as it’s a plainer piece of fabric, so your thread… and your quilting too, will show up here.  This type of project is also something small, practical, and pretty that provides alot of valuable practice quilting time!

The whole piece… you can’t see the quilting in the middle section at all!

Above: the thread choice for the couched trim on the border and binding with the Bernina #39 foot.  It’s a YLI Shimmer thread.  I bought it at Timeless Quilts and Friends in Missoula MT last fall when I was teaching there.  Not a bad price. (although I can’t remember what the yardage is).

Try something simple, practical and finish it in a day.

Or less!

EnJOY.