Pat’s OBW

Pat, my massage therapist, asked me if I would custom make a quilt for her. She gave me this pillow sham to use as my colour inspiration and left the rest up to me.

She loved my Asian one block wonder so that is what I decided to make for her. I used two different fabrics that had similar colour palettes.

I took me several hours to cut all my triangles and then start chain piecing them together with Tilly’s help.

I think the hardest part of a OBW is laying out all your beautiful, one-of-a-kind hexagons and trying to come up with a design that shows off the fabric.

I used two layers of batting(80/20 and wool) to give extra warmth and loft to the quilt. It was quilted with a floral and loop design and a custom feather in the border.

We took these pictures in less than ideal conditions. It was -20 degrees celcius and the pergola and trees cast a big shadow across everything.

For a OBW, it is very common to use a piece of the original fabric (usually in the border) to show what was used to create the unique hexagons. I used one of my fabrics as the border. For the second fabric, I fussy cut the repeating image of the swiss chard and appliquéd it to a section of plain hexagons. I put a scrap piece of wool batting on the back of the quilt top to trapunto the chard. I then used two layers of batting and dense quilting in the light purple background to give even more dimension to the chard.

I used 6 different fabrics to piece together the backing. I wanted to give Pat the flexibility to flip the quilt over and show the back if she was in the mood for a change. It has a similar colour palette to the front with the introduction of a green.