inspiration Upside Down

I love using wide backing fabrics. They make the quilt-finishing process feel that much easier and quicker, which is typically what I want after finishing a quilt top. One of my favorite sources for 108” wide quilt backings is Dragonfly Quiltworks. They stock simple solids and near solids, but also fun, playful backings that vibe well with modern quilts.

Recently I saw these two backings at Dragonfly: Growing Tree and Connections Color Story. I wanted that tree backing immediately for an upcoming picnic blanket. The Connections Color Story was a less practical choice, but I absolutely adore it. I will gladly create a quilt just to use this backing! In fact, that sounds like a fun challenge, don’t you think? It is totally upside down, but in a good way.

First, that picnic blanket! This will be a gift. The recipient loves forest colors, nature and picnics, so we can’t go wrong with this color scheme.

Rather than my go-to picnic quilt made up of simple squares, I have decided to do a mix of wonky stars and squares. I guess that’s because I have sewn some wonky stars lately for bee blocks. The sewing process is such fun that I need to make some more to get them out of my system. I have decided to sew the wonky stars using a variety of light blue scraps as backgrounds.

Luckily I have lots of triangle scraps in suitable blues and greens for the star points. These stars use up 8 triangle scraps each! It’s a gold mine for triangle scrap usage, I tell ya.

Tada, here is a start! I have cut a grid of that adorable dear fabric. I like the idea of repeating this one fabric to create soothing repetition and doing the rest of the simple squares in various prints.

By the way the fabric is called Night Visitor by Heather Ross and it’s actually another 108” wide fabric! Seems to be a theme today. After using a wide fabric as a backing, there are often scraps left over that come to good use in my patchworks.

Ok, onwards and upwards. I will be back later this week with a tutorial for sewing wonky stars!