Rectangles & Squares

The nice thing about quilting is that it allows you to play with geometry. For me this is ideal since I wasn't such a fan of geometry, proofs and all that demanding much more linear thought than I prefer to give (algebra and trig problems made more sense to me than geometry proofs; I'm sure math educators and cognitive scientists can explain why). In any event, quilting allows me to get creative with squares and rectangles. In the end, this quilt is a simple 9-patch pattern, but each block starts with a rectangle to which I added borders and then cut to make it uncentered.


Inspired in part by Denise Schmidt's "Pretty Squares" pattern and seeking to use some of my fun scrap rectangles from here, I started making this quilt top last spring. Then I interrupted it to make my mom's retirement quilt and toted it around in various boxes this summer. But when Yona and Tzvi's daughter was born, I pulled it out to finish it (lesson: always have a few works-in-progress that can be finished pretty quickly).

It was fun to experiment with shapes and there are endless variations to try in the future -- I know I want to make one with fewer colors to see how that could work (for example, Tallgrass Prairie Studio's "square motion" version of this idea which she calls a "wonky log pattern pattern" quilt). The tutorial she gives pretty accurately describes the process I used to make this quilt.

I used a fun stripy (and soft!) piece of flannel to back the quilt, and quilted using free motion diagonal lines to create an off-center, wavy diagonal grid. You can see what I mean if you click on the picture above and then look at the quilting lines on the deep turquoise square (featured above the text on the left). Finally, I bound the quilt with pieced binding, primarily consisting of orange and yellows that match the oranges and yellows from the quilt top and go well with the oranges and yellows in the flannel.