Quilt Finish – Liam’s Quilt

Isn’t it a great feeling when a quilt finds its owner? Sometimes I create for a specific person, but mostly I create for me. During the process, I inevitably start thinking about someone and that can influence the process. During last year’s Cut It Up QAL I got a bit distracted and made an unplanned quilt top using the flying geese four-at-a-time method. Except, I made them big! These are 6″ x 12″ finished flying geese, using up a bunch of blue, green, and yellow fanciful fat quarters I had languishing in my stash.

As I started exploring the colour way, I started editing in more novelty prints. Y’all know this is not usually my vibe, but there’s something magical and playful with just letting the fabrics do the heavy lifting. I found airplanes, gum boots, and robots and immediately started thinking about our good friends’ son, Liam. His parents and older sister, Evie, both have quilts of their own, and it was finally his turn!

So I continued adding peacock feathers, treasure maps, four-leaf clovers, Nancy Drew, cars and rainbows. I’m never one to assign gender to a quilt or colour story, so wanted to keep it flexible for both. The over-sized flying geese allowed plenty of room for these larger scale fabrics to shine on! If you’re stuck on how to use your similar prints, definitely consider this as a Nancy Drew mystery solved! I even made you a photo tutorial and cutting chart!

For the backing, I used a unicorn fabric I’ve had stashed since my trips to Japan and a strip of Jeni Baker’s Color Me Retro. This is one of my fave fabric collections ever, so I had to put some of it in the front too! I bound the whole thing up in an Alison Glass green blender which felt right at home with the rest of these saturated prints. This is a pretty simple quilt, but it does everything I ever wanted it to do!

The best part of it all is that it found its forever home with Liam this past week. He and his family came for a visit, so I got to hand-deliver my gift. Now, was he more interested in the ribbon it was wrapped up in? Perhaps! But I know he’ll grow to love it! As a little extra somethin-somethin, I’ve got this bundle of large scraps leftover that I’d like to give away to one of my Australian readers! Just leave me a comment anywhere you like saying something like, “Pick me!” “I wanna win!” “I need those!” “Send them this way!” I’ll have Mr. Sparkles pull a name out of a hat next week sometimes and I’ll reach out to you!

Title: Liam’s Quilt
Size: 48″ x 54″
Pattern: Flying Geese, 6″ x 12″ Four-At-A-Time
Fabric: Molli Sparkles curated bundle
Piecing: Machine stitched on Juki TL-98P with Aurifil 50wt, White 2024
Quilting: Long arm quilting by Mount Vincent Quilts
Binding: Hand stitched with Aurifil 40wt, Shining Green 5017
Backing: Jeni Baker Color Me Retro and blue unicorn fabric from Japan
Timing: January 2022 – December 2022
Favourite Part: Liam gets his own quilt!