Hidden Treasure, Behind the Design

We planned to have a focus on pieced borders in our March/April ’12 issue. To me, pieced borders add a lot of interest to a quilt, and I wanted to design a quilt for this issue. Here’s my “Hidden Treasure.” The fabric is Imperial Pheasant by Eleanor Grosch for FreeSpirit.

I combed through my block books looking for just the right block to work with and chose Broken Window from Maggie Malone’s 5,500 Quilt Block Designs.

Broken Window

I changed the seamlines in this block to make it easier to sew.

Hidden Treasure block

I’m usually drawn to blocks with stars, but for some reason, this block just caught my eye. Maybe I could see the secondary design that would be formed when the blocks were sewn together were stars!

Hidden Treasure block in quilt

When planning my borders, the first thing I look at are the different shapes in the block. Is there something that I could duplicate for a border? With this block, there were several things. First of all, I saw the stars at the block intersections. To me, it was obvious to start with a border that completed the stars.

The other shapes that I saw in the blocks were the Flying Geese and the Four Patches where the blocks intersected. Those 2 shapes make up the remaining borders.

Flying Geese in block and border

Four Patches at block intersection and border

I really like how the colors and design pop against the white background. Once I had the top pieced and ready to quilt, the next decision was what color thread to use for quilting. I was worried that using teal or green thread that matched the fabric would be too harsh on the white and also that white thread wouldn’t work on the darker fabrics. When I auditioned different thread colors, I found that pale green was perfect—it was light enough to not be distracting on the white patches but also blended in nicely with the darker fabrics.

close-up of the quilting

The thread is Pistachio Pudding from Quilter’s Choice by Golden Threads.

This was my first solo adventure using our HQ 18 Avante from Handi Quilter, and boy, was it fun! I could quilt at my own speed, and the HQ kept pace with me. I chose an all-over quilting design that was pretty forgiving and love the results!

Kits are available for a limited time for Hidden Treasure at quiltandsewshop.com.