Starting on Round 2 {Round Trip Quilts}

Heather's Round Trip Quilt package arrived on my door step on October 18th, after Liz worked her magic on the "Wishes for my Daughter" themed quilt.  Heather's note book is extremely detailed, outlining what she sees this quilt becoming and what sort of things she would like to see included.  Heather is making this quilt for her young daughter to use in her first 'big girl' bed and wants it to be full of things that she loves as well as things that Mom and Dad love too.

At first I thought I'd go with some cute paper pieced flowers and trees that I found online and add a nice big garden and forest to the quilt since her daughter loves flowers and being outdoors.  But I felt like the scale of these blocks would be too much this early in the stage.  I might still throw some in though.....we'll see.

Then I was leaning towards butterflies.  But I still wasn't feeling it.

Bee Vintage Butterfly Block

Garden Party - free PDF pattern

Butterfly simple 5' Paper Pieced Pattern

Heather also mentioned how much she likes paper piecing and, being adventurous, I though I might try something really out side of my comfort zone with these two cute little girls.  However, I'm not sure that I'm feeling quite that adventurous.

Girl Skipping

Girl chasing Butterflies

Then I remembered a block that was demoed for us at my local quilt guild's October meeting.  I don't remember what she called the block but my first thought was "Oh! I could size that down to make easy cathedral windows blocks.... and that's just what I did.  The method is similar to a tutorial posted by Elizabeth at Don't Call Me Betsy.  If I remember I'll take some photographs to post a more detailed tutorial of the method I'm using to make my blocks.

As I said already, Heather's notebook was incredibly detailed so pulling fabrics for her quilt was a breeze.  Her color inspiration was based on the Wee Wander collection by Sarah Jane.  Girly, but not too girly.  I dug into my stash and pulled some easily coordinated Cotton + Steel and other fabrics.

Then I got to work cutting.

Cool colors and low volumes

Warm colors

As an aside, wouldn't these look great as simple color coordinated four patch blocks? I'm thinking a full quilt in this palette is in my future.

Here's what the block will look like when it's all together.  Cool colors and low volume four-patch blocks with warm color cathedral windows.  I still need to top-stitch the curves, I'm leaning towards a variegated purple thread that I purchased for my triangle quilt awhile ago or simple invisible thread to avoid taking away from the design.  Now the question is, should I top-stitch before or after I piece the blocks together?  I'm leaning towards before.

Happy Quilting!

I'm linking up with Stitch by Stich for anything goes mondays.