Julie's Baby Quilt

I've been doing some quilting. Just a bit--this is the year of small projects, if I can help it. I'm working on knitting a sweater for Sophia, which is small, of course; I just made two hats for the girls and I'm thinking about some cabled mittens just for fun. Quilting, too, this year, I've decided to stay kind of small. I need to make a queen sized bed quilt for my room, but I'm letting some of it make itself (the spiderweb blocks are safely in Lisa's hands and will be home in the next few weeks).

Not making anything for church this year, I suspect, unless Advent needs something new (I like what we did this last year, though, and so I would vote against it). I just finished a baby quilt (sitting at a Worship Commission meeting pinning the binding on last night) for Katie next door--the girls on the block each made a square and I put them together and quilted it at the very last moment. I have in my quilting queue several half-finished projects: Leo's baby quilt that the girls on the block made needs quilting, Maeve's bunk quilt, and a vintage rail fence top I found at a yard sale needs putting together.

But, as Ann would say, I'm a process quilter, not a project quilter. I like learning something new, doing it, and then moving on to something else. And this quilt was a new process for me. A combination of things I knew already--paper piecing, curved seams--but put together in a new way. It's taken from Bella Bella Quilting, a book I picked up a little while ago as inspiration for church. Haven't used it for that yet, but now I've dipped my feet in this pool and know I can, as Rina my printmaking teacher used to say, "go large."

It's done mostly in earth tone batiks and it's effin amazing if I do say so myself. It's a good thing I quilted the baby's name at the bottom, because otherwise I would have found myself at Target an hour before the shower picking out some lovely onesies for Julie and keeping this for myself. But it makes me happy that it has a good home.

"St. Peter's Circle" is the title. Note: the quilt is far more square than these photos indicate. It's hanging up, pinned to the curtain on my front door, and so I got some rippling effects there on the sides. Laid out flat, it's flat and rectangular.

Center detail

That's a fleur de lis, although it's hard to pick out in this light.

Andrew, in a pseduo-Celtic script.