Voltage baby quilt

Finished!  The idea for this quilt was hatched when I made a Voltage machine paper pieced runner as a part of the Penny Sampler class.   These dramatic zigs and zags are pretty awesome, no?  I couldn't get the idea of a mixed-up voltage quilt off my mind, so when a good friend said she had a baby boy on the way, it was a done deal. 

I used all the fun, boy-ish novelty prints I had on hand like these super chill Ed Emberley alligators.  Any gator that gives bluebirds a ride can be my friend.

I found that this block style really, really needs high contrast fabrics to translate at distances.  You can see the lower left block doesn't at all read like a bolt of lightning from here since the two fabrics used have the same value.  That's cool though, since variations like that can make a quilt more interesting, right?  There's always a good excuse for how things come out when it comes to quilting!

Fitting the half blocks with the full blocks required some random fabric strips.  I like the way it adds more chaos to the design.  I purposely used all print fabrics to keep things visually lively.  Yep, this is not a low-stimulation quilt.  You've been warned, Laurie.

For quilting I did some HUGE zigzags in the same voltage shape, with echo quilting getting progressively farther apart.  I'm not actually sure it was worth it.   The zigzag quilting doesn't read at all from the front with all those busy prints and even on the back the eye gets lost.  I think I would have needed to make the zigzags smaller so that they would translate better, but that would mean more turning of the quilt.   If I was doing over, I'd just do diagonal straight lines or free motion quilting.

For the back, I pieced together some Denyse Schmidt Florence pieces on hand, which just happen to have that blue/green color scheme with black and white.  Because apparently I do black in baby quilts.   Hm.

Definitely a fun sew!  I'm considering writing a stand-alone pattern for this to add to my pattern shop.  It would be suitable for those new to machine paper piecing.  If anyone is interested, let me know!