Blue Beauty

Blue Beauty is a modern take on the American Beauty quilt.

I always wanted to create an American Beauty quilt but decided to do a small version first so I could concentrate on design and technique.

Batting

A few months back, I purchased some special, “Linda’s Choice Batting” from Linda’s Electric Quilters.

This batting is extremely dense. In fact, it looks like a blanket all itself!  Quilting it was very nice as it held its shape, took a needle very well and provided a sufficient amount of loft.  It wasn’t until after I took the quilt off of the machine, that I noticed some of my less dense quilting patterns were a bit poofy.  I may go back and add some fill to these.  Or, I may not – as soon as this quilt is washed, this probably won’t be an issue.

Design

This is a smaller American Beauty quilt so I could concentrate on technique without getting overwhelmed.  I have paper-pieced before, but on the round can be a little tricky.  The process was quite fun, after I got the hang of it.

The design was created using Electric Quilt 8 Software. I focused on lots of open space for quilting and some full and partial American Beauty elements.  I was trying out both the pattern and the batting so wanted ample opportunity to work with both in a small space.

Now that I have tested the waters, there is surely another American Beauty quilt on my horizon.  For now, this little blue beauty will hang in my home.

Have you ever created an American Beauty quilt?