Sequoia Quilt

This quilt was made especially for our girl. Today's her birthday and she had requested a new quilt for her bed. I love that the kids both appreciate handmade gifts and that they especially love their Mama's quilts. :) I told our girl that I wanted her to have some input on this and I made her scroll through my Quilting Inspiration Pinterest board. She loved everything about the Sequoia quilt so I ordered the book (that cover quilt is on my list too!)

I fretted over fabrics. The original quilt is only  56 x 70 so I enlarged my blocks to 6", but she loved the color of the original so I went in search of something similar. I stayed with a solid black and gray, but chose textured fabrics for the lagoon and white:

 This is such a simple quilt, yet the design is striking. Simple HST's...lots of them, 176 to be exact, but I love their versatility. Simple masking tape marked the rows:

                          

I marked off each one on a copy from the book in order to keep from turning anything around and it worked like a charm:

                                   

I made them over the course of a week and I took the time to sliver trim each one:

                                 

I was stumped as to what to use for a backing, but we settled on this wide gray

 and I bound it in the lagoon.

                             
                             
 A Sarah Plain and Tall marathon was on TV as I worked on the binding. The scene I captured is when Jacob falls to the ground as it finally begins to rain, bringing an end to a prolonged drought. That's exactly what it'll be like when we finally get a good rain here:

                                        

After a run through the washer, the quilt spent some time on the line, soaking up as much of the New Mexico sunshine as it could hold for our girl:

                             

See how dry we are. Not even a weed. I especially love the quilting pattern that Jackie chose:

                             

It gives the quilt great movement and an additional southwestern design element to the graphic piecing:

When it came time to photograph it, I was stumped. My usual chicken yard fence location wasn't quite tall enough:

Although the wind was blowing quite nicely and it held up that big ol' quilt without nary a clip. Honestly, I just climbed up the ladder, laid it close to the fence, and the wind just sucked it up against the fence. It finishes at 90 x 110 so it's a pretty good size. There wasn't a spot on the hay stack that worked either, but the side of the barn turned out to be perfect:

Guess it's soaking up some of the New Mexico wind to send to our girl too:

                                             

Heck, I think it was trying to get to her without being sent in a box. Air mail...or wind mail:

                                   

I love everything about this quilt from the first stitch to the last,

                         

but the thing I love the most about it is that it was made for this pretty incredible kid:

Happy Birthday, Sprout! Love, Mama and Daddy