Hippie Rainbow Flowers Quilt

Hippie Rainbow Flowers – Applique Quilt

The Hippie Rainbow Flowers quilt is a custom-pieced and applique lap quilt with lots of color and texture.

Recently, it has been brought to my attention that I should be writing down how I come about creating some of my custom quilt designs.  So, whenever possible, I will do my best to document their creation.

The title is a mouthful, but it surely describes this fun little quilt. Actually this quilt was not at all planned and came as an after thought to the Double Hour Glass Quilt I made from the fat quarters I received from my row-by-row submission.

Choosing Fabrics

After the Double Hour Glass was completed, I was left with several batik fat quarters that were a little different theme – they leaned toward Hippie.

The more I looked at these fabrics, the more I saw that they were really not each of one color, but held different color combinations depending on where in the quarter I looked.

At first I felt this was a stumbling block in using these fabrics to create a quilt, but then I began to see a pattern.  I saw that overall I was looking at a rainbow – or even a rainbow-hued sunset.  It was at this point I decided to cut it all up and see where this would lead.

So, before I get into the meat of the design, I would like to have a talk with all my OCD, waste-not type of friend quilters out there.  Yes, you know who you are.  One of my biggest issues with working with Fat Quarters is that

I HATE WASTE!

Do your math first!

Before cutting up the quarters, I did some easy math and found that if I cut the quarters in 3″ strips and then 3″ squares, I would have ultimately no waste.  I love this idea!  If you remember from the Double Hourglass Quilt, I was so excited with my 3 yards of accent fabric was used totally used up with no waste.  It’s the little things that make our type happy!

Group your colors

The next challenge was separate the blocks into color groupings.  If you have the nuances of color like I did in this quilt, it can take some time and a bit of trial and error, but it is important to note to let your eyes be happy and don’t overthink it too much.

Walk away, get a cup of coffee- pet the cat and come back in a while to take another look

This alone can help to confirm or deny your color choices.  I used this technique both when grouping colors and then when deciding on row configurations.  Once the colors were put in order, I counted the general groups R O Y G B I V

RED–ORANGE–YELLOW–GREEN–BLUE–INDIGO–VIOLET

Lay out the design

Because there were so many little squares, I put my design board over a bed and arranged (and re-arranged) until I liked the look.  Again, see the note above about going to drink coffee with the cat.

Woo Hoo!

This is the WOO HOO moment when you realize that the toughest part is over. Now I can actually see the road ahead – it’s time to start sewing this section!

After the middle was complete, I took my measurements (top middle bottom) so I could measure my thick, white-on-white borders.  I purposely went with a very thick border so that the flowers would have a landing spot.  The white-on-white is a very large pattern of swirlies which help to soften the geometric blockiness of the sunset(rise)

Creating custom borders

The second border consists of strips that were left over from the original Double Hourglass Quilt.  The rainbow colors and batiks were a good fit. I tried to mirror the internal color flow with the outside border, but besides for going in the same order, I didn’t fuss over it too much.

I also utilized scraps from that quilt as well as some remaining fat quarters to create the flowers.

The flowers were designed using the AccuQuilt Go! Rose of Sharon #2 (55382) die.  Again, I cut out various colors an sizes then auditioned them as a spray on the top right and bottom left of the quilt top. I used iron-on adhesive to affix the flowers prior to quilting and then used the long arm to applique them in place.

The quilting patterns used to finish this up included echo quilting around the flowers, feathers up and down the white-on-white border and finally a free motion swirl pattern over the mosaic sunset/rise.  Overall, this was a fun quilt to create.

Overall, this quilt is:

Dimensions: 52″ x 69″

Center Blocks: 3″x3″ each – 15 across and 20 down

White on White Border: 6″ wide

Colored Border: 3″ Wide