Rainbow Nest

 

Last fall I learned that a new grand baby would be joining the family with a due date in April.  This was exciting news.  Shortly after, the new news was that the baby would be a girl.  I had been made aware of the book "Rainbow Nest" by Edyta Sitar, a fabric and quilt designer extraordinaire.  Her company is called Laundry Basket Quilts.  I ordered two copies of the book (one for my quilting sister) and two charms packs of Jellybean Batiks fabric from Amazon.  Jellybean Batiks was the fabric line designed and used by Edyta for her version of Rainbow Nest.  I used Floral Gatherings by Primative Gatherings in pink for my background fabric rather than Edyta's choice of a blue figure on cream for her version.  This quilt was going to be for a girl after all.

I really liked the message of the book which is about a mother expecting a baby and doing all the nesting things expectant mothers do while including her older child in the experience.  She prepares for the baby just like a mother bird prepares a nest for her babies.  This quilt and book were also a gift, in a way, for older brother Oscar.

I was able to cut all the necessary strips necessary for the strip piecing to make the nine patch blocks and the applique pieces from the two charm square packs (5 inch square pieces of all fabrics in the line which come in a stack.)

I used the back basting method of applique for the center block.

 This was my first time ever using batik fabrics and I loved the way that nine patches could subtly move from color to color around the center block.

It took some planning but was so much fun.

I paid close attention to Edyta's pattern and picture in the back of the book.

It was necessary to lay all the blocks out carefully, even sewing some together as I went,  before sewing the quilt together.

Edyta may have used layer cake pieces (10 inch squares of fabric) to make her matching rainbow binding.  This was not doable with my charm packs.  I remembered that I had purchased a jelly roll (2 1/2 inches by 42 inches or width of the fabric strips and rolled together some of each color) of Simply Color by V and Co. a couple of years ago on sale.  I could use it for my binding as well as helping me out with extending my backing as I did not have enough of the cream with pink print leftover for the back.

I really liked how the fresh colorful back turned out.

Each jelly roll strip of color had an ombre effect with dark color going to a light color in the center of each strip.  For the binding I cut those strips in half to make a binding that would coordinate with each color of block around the quilt.  It worked perfectly!

I used a one inch diagonal grid for the machine quilting which stopped at each appliqued piece.

I hand quilted around each shape for I felt I would spoil it trying to machine stitch around all those tiny pieces.

I used a double layer of bamboo batting for this quilt (Utah winters) which made the hand quilting difficult.  Let's just say that there are tiny stitches but they are somewhat apart.

I truly feel that this is my favorite quilt ever.  It just sings and I loved seeing it come together.