Picnic Ready

I feel like that’s what this quilt would be perfect for…a picnic!  The happy, bright colors remind me of the perfect blanket to lounge on in a park while eating little sandwiches and sipping lemonade.  Unfortunately, it’s not exactly the time of year for picnicking, but can you tell I’m dreaming of summer?

I started this quilt back in November thinking I would put it together fairly quickly but it’s taken longer than I anticipated.  That’s because I made a mistake.  It was really frustrating and I was about ready to pack the unfinished quilt away and think about it another time, but instead I said to myself, “Self, you can do this.”  And I powered through.

The mistake I made was basting the quilt too quickly and not putting enough safety pins in it.  (I use the safety pin method to hold my quilts together.)  As I started quilting it, the top and batting started to shift a little from the bottom and I was in pickle.  It wouldn’t have been a problem except that I had made a second mistake and I trimmed the back too close and didn’t give myself enough extra fabric for any shifting that can happen during quilting.  Ugh.  Needless to say, I was annoyed.  The good news is that I hadn’t quilted all that much when I realized what was happening.

After my pep talk to keep me going, I pulled out the quilting and started over.  I tried to come up with another solution instead of pulling it out, but I couldn’t come up with one that I liked.  Just when I think I’ve been quilting long enough to stop making dumb mistakes, I make one!  Oh well.  Lesson learned.

As for my fabric choices, I had this old Denyse Schmidt fabric that I’ve had forever and wanted to use.  I only used prints on the front of the quilt and didn’t mix any solids with it, so for the back I wanted something solid so as not to distract from the front.  I went with a solid denim(ish) blue colored fabric.  Again for the binding, I wanted something solid that coordinated with the front and went with a happy yellow.

I’m probably going to list this quilt in my Etsy shop in case you are interested in using it for your own picnic once spring hits.  Or if you live in a warm environment and can use it now, consider me jealous.