Summer at Mom's Quilt

summer-quilt

The quilt was made possible with a lot of help from my friends on my Candy Apple Quilts Yahoo group. I asked for everyone to send a 6-inch strip of floral fabric to me so I could have lots of variety. The response was overwhelming! Here are just some of the fabrics that I received:

florals

greens

I was intrigued with finding a faster way to create all of the half-square triangles that would be needed for the center section, and for the border. I put a solid white fabric on the machine first. Then, I placed a strip of floral fabric right side down on the white fabric with a pin at each end to hold it in place. Using the computer, I set up all of the sewing for the half square triangles. I then cut the strips apart and ironed the pieces open to create all of the pieces I needed for the pinwheels.

When all of the pinwheels were complete, it didn't take long to sew them together into the center portion of the quilt.

strips

strips-cut-open

hsts

pinwheels

center

From the various green fabrics, I cut all of the leaves for the appliqued border. All of the applique was done by hand.

appliqued-leaves

Back to the quilting machine with more white fabric, and a pretty lime green. All of the half square triangles were laid out in advance, and sewn row after row, non-stop.

green-border-fabric

After cutting the rows and blocks apart, I had all of the half square triangles that I needed for the outer border of the quilt!

border-hst

The only job left was to measure the applique borders and the outer borders, and apply them. I added the binding, sprinkled a few yo-yos on for fun, and it's done! Click on the images below to see the full-sized pictures.

summer-blocks

summer-leaves

yo-yos

corner1

close-up

This pattern for the quilt is available from McCall's Magazine.