In the summer of 2008 I started working on a quilt for my parents to commemorate their 25th wedding anniversary coming up in April of 2009. I thought 6 months was plenty of time to finish a quilt. I wanted to make an ocean waves block with green, purple and black and white prints and solid black center boxes. I did lots of math and made tons of triangle units.
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| My original sketches and math. |
But then I got busy, or bored or who knows what, and their 25th wedding anniversary came and went without a quilt. And then several more anniversaries. Last fall when I joined the Portland Modern Quilt Guild I was looking through my stash for a project to work on for sew day and came across the paper bag with all the triangle units. I decided to abandon the ocean waves and figure out something new. I played around with many different layouts but ended up with this one that results in concentric squares formed out of triangles. I managed to put the whole quilt together, quilt and finish it in time for their 31st anniversary two weeks ago. I decided to call this design “Beach House” since I started on a path to ocean waves and I think it ended up looking a little log cabin like.
This quilt is not quite big enough to fit on the bed, but is a good size for a picnic (and has a nice dark back) or for snuggling up on the couch.
The blocks are all fabrics I bought or had in my collection in 2008. The sashing, border and binding are a combination of Kona and scraps. The back is a mystery fabric my friend Amy gave to me that was in her stash. I used some leftover HST to join the back pieces together.
I quilted this on my home machine with my new walking foot and a crosshatch pattern following the diagonals of the blocks.
I was in a bit of hurry with the binding and was trying to use scraps and so I did not do mitered seams when I was sewing the strips together. I have always done mitered seams because “that’s what you do.” But I didn’t know why until I was trying to hand stitch the binding on. Turns out straight seams are kind of bulky! It worked out and I think it looks fine, but I have learned my lesson and will take the extra five seconds to do mitered seams for future quilts.
I really love how this turned out, and I’m so glad to have it off my UFO list. And my parents love it too
