On one glorious spring day this week, I went outside to photograph a finished quilt. While my boy kicked around in muddy boots, my husband was building a pig house (no joke). But, happily he paused a moment to oblige me.

Here's the story of how a quilt came to be.

A month ago I began a baby quilt for Miss Laurie.  Laurie and I have been friends, literally, forever. Since babyhood, in fact.  And despite the fact that we live on opposite coasts, we seem to have grown closer since she finally started having babies (wink).  I may have twisted her arm when I suggested the Sixth Time's the Charm quilt from Handmade Beginnings by Anna Maria Horner, but I'm not sure because we were only on the telephone.  I do know that I showed her the book cover and the adorable owl print by Anne Kelle.  I think that's when she pretty much threw up her hands, made some kind of "I'm sure it'll be good" statement and merely requested that the quilt have some kind of focus on green and brown.

For awhile there the whole green/brown concept looked dicey.  All of those bright rainbow owls were calling to me and my fabric stash showed itself to be lacking in browns.  After augmenting my stash, I pushed through and made the triangles for Anna's Sixth Time's the Charm Quilt in my own fabric-saving way (tutorial here), which left me with the in-progress hexagon above.  Which had to be trimmed down.  Only I had made the triangles too small... and the resulting rectangle was tiny.  Oops.

But tiny did turn into a boon rather than a bummer because it forced me to add a brown border.  I think the border really cements the whole green and brown concept, don't you?  The border is Robert Kaufman's "quilter's linen basics" in cocoa.  It stitched up nicely and has a nice, subtle depth.

The binding is Kona olive

and the backing is Metro Circles in Chocolate. And Metro circles, which is available in lots of variations, is definitely a new favorite of mine for backing.  I love how modern it looks.  I quilted in matching dark brown thread so that the back would remain just simple.  And, hey, she can always show the quilt on this side for a true green/brown element in the room, right?

For quilting I kept is simple, just echoing the spiderweb shape of the intersecting triangles and adding some lines within the triangles for extra security.

The blossoms on that day were absolutely lovely.  And, come to think of it, they're just as green and brown!

Happy endings here. Laurie - your quilt is on the way. Have a blessed birth!