A 9-Patch for Gail

Since Gail's birthday is in January she was the first of "The Girls" to receive her quilt.

This fabric, with it’s angels and prayers, inspired me to create a quilt for Gail. Her spirit is evident in everything she does. She has a kind heart and gentle nature backed by a strong faith. I'm counting on her backing when I make that final trip! 

With just a half yard of the novelty fabric I wasn’t sure I’d have enough.  In my first layout I tried to use a snowball along with a nine patch of green and blue coordinates.

 

The snowball seemed to cut off too much of what was fun about the novelty print so I abandoned that and went with a full square of the print. 

The green and blue of the 9 patch looked too dark so I alternated them with the cream background. The cream sashing also helped to lighted things up.  I used a mottled rust and the blue floral for the corner stones in the sashing to tie in with the colors of the borders, piping and binding.

I couldn't resist using these quilts as an opportunity to try something new.  For Gail's I use the mottled rust to create a small band of piping between the dark blue and floral borders. I repeated the rust color for the binding which looks beautiful in contrast to the dark blue backing. I didn't realize that I should have based this down before giving it to my long-arm quilter but she was a dear and did it for me.

The long arm quilting for this quilt looks like wings of an angel.  How appropriate!  For the thread I selected a rust color that can be seen clearly on the back yet blends in nicely on the front.

The final touch was a label with a special caption that I found on the Internet which reads:

"A day hemmed in prayer seldom unravels."

One final note, when Gail read the quote on the label she ran to find a project she had been working on; a counted cross stitch of the very same sentiment!  Great minds think alike.