A plus quilt has been on my 'to-do' list for awhile. They've been popular in blogland for awhile now, and I like the simplicity of them, and how they can really showcase colors and fabrics. So with the design picked out, I just needed a color scheme. I've been pinning color cards on Pinterest like mad, so I figured that was a great place to start looking for inspiration.
This is the color card I went with. What do you think? Did I capture these colors with my quilt? I think I did pretty well. The daisy photo is so pretty, but I like how the colors themselves can actually read gender neutral. I think it is so difficult to make really nice gender neutral pieces. It seems like all of the cute prints just end up looking like a boy or girl fabric.
I ended up ordering several teals, aquas, and golds for this quilt because my stash was lacking in those colors. I tend to use them a lot. I found it really difficult to find the 'right' teal or aqua when ordering online! It seems that every manufacturer has a different interpretation of teal and aqua...so some of my picks ended up more blue and others more green. That's fine, more fabric for my stash!
I typically don't enjoy sewing long rows together for quilts, so I sewed this quilt top together in blocks instead. I arranged all of my individual squares on my design wall first. Once I was satisfied with the layout, I began sewing the squares together into 9-patch blocks. This worked wonderfully! The top came together pretty fast and my seams matched up pretty well. I think if I had done this in rows I would have had more misaligned seams.
I used my typical Warm & White batting on this one, but I didn't have a piece that was quite big enough. I ended up splicing two pieces together. This was my first time trying this technique, and it worked really well. I laid the two pieces side-by-side and used my zig-zag stitch to sew them together. You can't tell where the batting seam is in the finished quilt at all. It's a great way to use up batting scraps.
You can see my new HardcoreQuilts fabric label in the binding of this quilt. I'm happy to report that it was a cinch to sew this in. I also used flannel for the first time as the backing. I will definitely do that again! It makes for a really soft backing. I was a little worried that I'd have trouble with the quilting since I have cotton on top and flannel on the back, but I didn't. The quilting was pretty simple, I echo-quilted a few of the pluses and then a few rectangles here and there to fill in any open spots.
I love this quilt so much I'm tempted to keep it! But, I don't really need more baby quilts around here (yet!) so I've listed it in my Etsy shop. I may be making more plus quilts like it soon though...it was so much fun :-).
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