Kitchen window quilt

If you love quilt blogs, Oh, Fransson! is a must-read. Elizabeth Hartman does such a great job keeping her blog clean and crisp, with lots of inspiration and step-by-step tutorials (like the one I used for the laptop cozy.) I bought her first book "The Practical Guide to Patchwork" and recently found out she is writing a second quilting book called "Modern Patchwork".

This is the only quilt book I've purchased to date. Usually, I would take a quilting class at the workroom, use an online tutorial, or figure it out on my own. But classes don't always work with my schedule, and they can get a bit pricey. Online tutorials are not always complete, and having to figure out all the math (how much fabric, how big to cut each piece, how big is my seam allowance again?) is quite a chore, so I ended up buying Elizabeth's book whilst searching for a good modern quilt design to make for my mother in law. My mother in law is a great supporter of my quilting hobby; every year since I've found the workroom, she has given me a giftcard in my stocking. It never takes long for me to spend the gift cards...

When I saw the "kitchen window" quilt design in Elizabeth's book, I knew it would be the perfect quilt for me to make. I didn't want to fuss too much about matching fabrics, making sure there's enough contrast and coordination, so this pattern works perfectly. Each chosen fabric is framed (like a kitchen window) so I was able to pick a loose colour palette and just go nuts buying really pretty fabric.

The feature fabrics I chose were generally things you'd see outside your window: birds, bugs, leaves, flowers.

I used:

Cut Out & Keep by Heather Moore
June Bug: Songbirds by Alexander Henry
June Bug: Malt Bugs and Birds by Alexander Henry
La Petite Ecole in Faded Red Word by French General for Moda
Martinique: Bisque in Brown Floral by 3 Sisters
Westminster Navy Patterned Floral by Fabric Freedom

I framed them with deep-brown Evening Mist by Sentimental Studios and then kept the borders clean with a cream Kona Solid.

This quilt came together relatively quickly; I mostly stitched-in-the-ditch to machine quilt it together with a little bit of artistic stitching inside each frame. I did a bit of a scrappy back and then bound it with a blue and gold star fabric.

I gave the quilt to my mother in law in October for her birthday. She loved it. It's definitely a quilt pattern that I would try again!