Summer Dreams, Bright Hopes

The Summer Dreams or Bright Hopes quilts are quilted. I quilted them on my sewing machine with very simple quilting.

The quilting consists of stitch in the ditch along the seam lines between the blocks horizontally and vertically. Then I stitched diagonally both directions. Plain white thread was used on the front and backside.

I love this little bird fabric so for one of the quilts, I added several blocks of fabric instead of a pieced block.

You don't really notice the fabric blocks though. Look at the side by side pictures, the squares really blend in.

I did make a mistake when cutting some of the rectangles for the blocks. My rectangles weren't quite wide enough, easy to fix though. I just trimmed another 1/2" off, sewed fabric strip along that edge then then trimmed to size. Go ahead, enlarge the photos, see if you can find the fix. I think there were 4 blocks I needed to do this to.

They both measure 48" by 62", a little big for a crib quilt but perfect for a youth bed. I always liked crib quilts for my babies bigger than most people. When I was up in the middle of the night, especially in the winter, I liked the quilt to cover me too!

In the summer of 2018, I was organizing my fabrics and I came across cotton/poly fabrics I used when I sewed little granddaughter dresses. I thought these fabrics would make good backings for quilts. These fabrics are what I used on the backs of Summer Dreams, they have the soft, low volume look.

I had planned to use the bottom red/yellow/pink/blue stripe for the binding of the quilts but I didn't think it looked right so I went with the lavender/aqua fabric. 

What I like about the stripe I did use is the lines are printed diagonally on the fabric which gives the illusion that I used bias binding.  

I love the look of these quilts, they're so joyful and springy looking!

There may be more low volume quilts in my future. 

One of the blogs I enjoy reading is Quilted Twins. She is one of the most prolific quilters whose blog I read. She recently had this post highlighting some of the low volume quilts she's made. (While you're on her blog, check out her free quilt patterns)

The Bright Hopes pattern was so simple and easy to make. The original pattern was published on the Red Pepper Quilts blog. She has a tutorial for piecing the blocks. Yes, there is a partial seam but that's not hard. She also has listed the sizes to cut for different sized blocks. I see making more of these blocks, not necessarily in low volume fabrics, in the future.

Linking to Free Motion Mavericks, Needle & Thread Thursday, Let's Make Baby Quilts, Peacock Party, Confessions of a Fabric Addict, TGIFF!, Brag About Your Beauties, Finished Or Not Friday, Oh Scrap