Taste the Rainbow

I have excited finish to show today, Taste the Rainbow, a modern birds in the air mini quilt is finally all done!

My local modern quilt guild (the Greenville Modern Quilt Guild) announced a challenge in late spring to make a mini quilt (less than 36" on all sides) with a modern take on the classic birds in the air block.

I love the birds in the air block (in fact the quilt design I have published in the 2018 Quilter's Planner is take on the block, you can see it here.)

My mind went towards how to place the blocks without the traditional grid and thought of a circular design.  Combining that with a rainbow palette and I had the beginnings of my quilt design.  The rainbow fabrics are a mixture of fabric manufacturers with the majority of the fabrics being Robert Kaufman Kona Cottons and Michael Miller Cotton Coutures.  The background is a Blueberry Park print from Karen Lewis for Robert Kaufman.

I used Corel Draw to draw out the design and create the paper piecing templates.  In order to keep everything well aligned and spaced, I added a lot of radial lines, you can see the craziness.

In my first iteration of the design, all of the blocks were facing the same direction but as I continued to play with the design, I flipped the blocks so they were alternating facing inside and outside.

Once the design was finalized (at 32 1/2" x 32 1/2"), I created the paper piecing templates.  The circle has 16 slices, each slice contains 4 sections, and each section contains 3-8 pieces of fabric.  Needless to say, this was not a quick quilt to make.

The quilt top finished was finally finished and then it was time to quilt bast and quilt.  Aurifil sent me matching 12 wt threads for each of the triangles.

My first thought was to add little cross-stitch crosses into the triangles but I did not think that looked right.  I then tried french knots, then walking foot quilting, and then free motion quilting.  I was not happy with any of these.  Finally I tried adding some running stitch embroidery (I am calling it embroidery as the stitches only go through the top layer, they are not quilting stitches) and I loved how it looked.  I added running stitches with 1/8" spacing between the lines.  This also took a long time but gave me a nice hand project for when I was outside with the kids.

I quilted the background by echoing the triangle shapes close to the seam lines and then adding some concentric 16 sided polygons.

So here is the finished quilt, I am really happy with how it turned out.  As a bonus, I won first place in the guild challenge!

As I have been sharing sneak peeks of the design I had a number of quilters ask if I could release this quilt as a pattern, I am happy to oblige :)

Taste the Rainbow Templates - Craftsy & Etsy

Note: This is a set of advanced level paper piecing templates, not a full pattern.  The instructions do not contain general paper piecing instructions, sizes of fabric pieces to cut, or seam allowances printed on the template sections.  The mini quilt finishes at 32 1/2" x 32 1/2".

You can find the instructions on sale at both Craftsy and Etsy for only $5 for the next week (ending at midnight on Friday the 25th).  After Friday, the instructions will go up to $7.50.

Thanks for taking a look and thank you to my pattern reviewers Paige @ Quilted Bloooms and Yvonne @ Quilting Jetgirl for all of their time and experience.