Flow Green, 32" x 42".

The last few years DH and I have been busy with some lifecycle events - moving to a smaller house, the arrival of grandchildren, etc.  - so there has been little time for quilting. However, I did manage to finish the quilt in this post last year.  The quilt showcases fabrics I painted in a workshop I took with Mickey Lawler, a fabulous teacher, ten years ago. 

At the end of the workshop I had a small stack of 18" x 24" hand-painted samples, and no clue as to what to do with them,  so they joined other workshop products in my stash. Eventually, some sketching led to the idea of floating squares, picking up the green and blue tones.

In progress, with wider blue strips.

When I first designed the layout, I made the blue strips 1" wide finished dimension. However, when displayed on my design wall, the blue strips clearly overwhelmed the painted blocks.  So, I recut and restitched the blocks with 1/2" finished dimension blue strips. Much better.

Relationship between painted square and blue "shadow" strips not pleasing.

Stencil and marking pen.

The quilt is hand-quilted using a stencil titled Water Background, from The Stencil Company, and Gutermann quilting thread in color 9837, which perfectly matched the sashing fabric, Kona cotton #253 Sprout.  I marked the entire quilt top before basting the quilt/batting/backing sandwich, using a blue ink water soluble marker made by Clover. The marker came with warnings: test on fabric first, and a time window on solubility of two weeks. So, I had two weeks to quilt this small quilt, and planned accordingly.  I met the deadline, immersed the quilt in my bathtub and the markings did indeed wash out completely.

Tools of the trade.

Final design: squares are 3.5", blue strips are .5" and green sashing is 2" wide.