Making friends with chartreuse

Favorites. We all have them. Toss me blues and reds and I'm set. These days deep oranges are close to my heart. Green and I have a more mixed relationship. Forest green works for me. Lime green not so much. Chartreuse and I are just not friends. I was therefore a little disappointed to see that the "Sprout" colorway in Sanae's Arcadia (Moda Fabrics) and the "Pistachio" colorway in Momo's Wonderland (also Moda) flirted with the edges of the chartreuse area of the green spectrum. After receiving charm packs of each design collection, I immediately sorted out these less desirable squares and wondered what I could possibly make out of them that I would like.

While I do not harbor newfound love for either sprout or pistachio, it turns out that the colors against which they sit make a big difference. Next to tomato-y reds and sky-like blues they don't look pretty (to me). Next to rich oranges and velvety purples, the yellowy greens can't compete. But next to turquoise they look pretty darn cool.

A friend gave me a couple yards of fabric that had been passed down to her. Suddenly sprout and pistachio turned a corner, they looked fun, they stood out in a good way. Their strengths revealed, it was time to fashion a quilt.

I was pretty sure I wanted to use this design -- I had recently seen it on a blog that I thought I had bookmarked but can't seem to find at the moment. Just in case, I started with half-square triangles and then tested out a couple other layouts, but this version won out. And I like it. It's part of my gender-neutral baby quilt stash that will be depleted over the course of the summer...

As for the back, I pieced together some of the green from the front and a cream & navy piece I had in my stash. I wanted to break up the green, and I think these simple stripes accomplish that. The above picture gives a sense of the quilting -- straight lines around the full diamonds on the front and "fake stippling" in each of the corners. By "fake stippling," I mean that I didn't yet own a darning foot and tried to make big stippling-esque loops with a regular 1/4-inch presser foot. It worked as well as it could have and until I did some real stippling a couple weeks later, I didn't realize how much easier making curves could be. Live and learn.

Originally I thought about binding the quilt in orange as I thought it would make the colors pop some more, but I found that cream looked much better. I'm not sure that I will ever go out and buy chartreuse-esque fabric, but this was a good experiment and I like the results.