The East West Quilt

After a few weeks of teasing, here is the latest quilt that I had the pleasure of designing for Cloud9 Fabrics. In addition to the gorgeous photos (and free pattern!) over at Cloud9’s blog, I wanted to show some more of the shots that I got on a beautiful late summer day that really show off the quilting.

I got my amazing surprise birthday present, a Janome 6600, about a month ago (that’s one way to surprise a girl, make it a month early), and it made all the difference with this quilt. I am loving the Accu-Feed, which made quilting wavy lines on the Essex cotton-linen blend really fun.

The back is The Way of Flowers from the Koi collection. I could stare at it forever.

The binding is Smile and Wave in Navy. I bought an extra half yard of each of the Smile and Wave prints because they’re just so versatile. Lately I’ve been machine binding my quilts, but I hand-sewed this one to the back in one 3.5-hour marathon session. (Is that a long time? I feel like a terribly slow hand-sewist, but I was plugging along on this one.)

Here’s another “quilt on a fence” shot. I think my neighbors think I’m crazy, taking so many pictures of blankets.

And when the photo shoot came inside, there were props! This is our beta fish, Hunson. He would probably get eaten by Koi, but he’s ok with the quilt. (I was so convinced that I had to get this contrived shot that I risked spilling fish water. Do not try this at home with precious quilts, kids.)

Check out the free downloadable pattern and my other quilt patterns and tutorials from the menu above. And thanks as always for visiting. You guys are the sweetest.