To Health: A Quilt

I offered a few glimpses of this quilt in the making. It started as a quilt to contribute to 100 Quilts for Christmas but its purpose and intended recipient quickly shifted. (I donated a different quilt to my local children's hospital but, in the frenzy of dropping it off, failed to take a picture.) A close family friend has been fighting breast cancer this fall. Once I realized that I had cut enough strips to make a good-sized lap quilt rather than just a kid's quilt, I decided that it needed to go to someone I know, and hte Maer house would be its new destination. I returned to DC on Wednesday and stopped by to drop off the quilt on Thursday night, the day before her surgery. I like to think that a warm and cozy quilt is just the right thing to return to and recover under.

I backed it with a deep aquamarine fleece, which makes it very warm and comfortable. I love how the straight-line quilting shows up on the fleece. When I back a quilt with fleece, I don't use batting as I find the fleece thick enough on its own. I used to shy away from lots of quilting with fleece backs, but I've become very comfortable with quilting fleece and now quilt it as I would any other quilt.

Red and aqua has long been a popular color combination, and I really do like the pairing. This quilt brightens up a room without being too flashy. Coincidentally but fortuitously, it matches the new chairs in Maer house perfectly.

There are some fabrics I love at first (online) sight and others that I need to see in person. The red print at the top of the picture -- Alexander Henry's Farmdale Blossom -- is one of the latter. I was sort of meh about it when I first saw pictures. But then I saw it at the Stitch Lab in Austin and had to buy a bit. I only bought a 1/2 yard, so I'm using it sparingly for now -- one strip in this quilt and some more waiting for other projects...