paired

Another Cotton + Steel quilt? Why, yes! I was playing around with my Cotton + Steel stash one day and once again was admiring how many ways they can be paired. Inspired by this image from Jeni’s Splendid ice creams, I made up a bunch of these equilateral triangles back in January. I couldn’t come up with a plan for the layout, so I set them aside for a few months.

I originally thought that I might add in a bunch of brightly colored solids and maybe play around with the layout, but when I pulled the triangles out recently, having just received this great polka dot print from the Hello Bear collection by Bonnie Christine, I knew it was what I had been waiting for. I think I’ve mentioned recently that I’ve been trying to be good about only buying fat quarters or half yards of favorite fabrics (or f8ths of entire lines I like), but I had to make an exception for this fabric. I won’t tell you exactly how many yards I’ve bought so far, but suffice to say I’ve broken my 1/2 yard rule.

(Hazel still adores Alexia’s Tiger Stripe print!)

I love the randomness of the polka dots, making it a great one to chop up and use as a background (Penny and Amber have both been making fabulous blocks with it as the background). I was a little surprised when I received it to find that it wasn’t as white as I expected, but it turns out that the slightly off white color works perfectly with so many other fabrics.

Anyway, I digress. Don’t you love these great prints? I think the colors look great together and think that this low volume background print lets them really shine — something that wouldn’t have been the case with my initial colored solid idea. I suppose it goes to show that sometimes it works to set projects aside if they’re not coming together. In the end, it was a quick finish, especially since these triangles are larger, measuring 9″.

We stopped by my brother’s shop one day where I thought I might be able to tape this quilt top to the side of his warehouse (no go – note to self, get better tape!). As it turned out, he happened to be there, so he was nice enough to be the quilt holder of the day.

The kids think their uncle is pretty funny, and soon this was less about a quilt photo shoot and more about a game of peekaboo.

They call him ‘uncle beep beep’ (which is slightly better than my poor sister Whitney’s nickname of ‘aunt meat’) and think it’s especially hilarious since they realize that both my brother and sister wish they had been given better nicknames. Ah, kids be funny.

I liked making this one so much that I’ve already made up another, this time using some of Heather Ross’s upcoming Tiger Lily line. I’ve been driving around with it in my car, hoping for a chance to get photos, but we’ve had a week of rain, so no luck yet…