CAKE, COUTURE & CIE

I promised myself that if I ever finished this quilt, I would start a blog and include it as the subject of my first entry. So here it is! Since this quilt was my very first, I intentionally kept it very simple and relatively small (33 inches² / 84 cm²) so as to keep me from getting discouraged along the way. It is machine pieced and hand quilted, including the binding.   

One of my initial observations about quilting is that the most difficult part was not sewing together all the pieces of fabric, pressing the seams and hand quilting each individual square, but rather finding colors that work well together. When you put so much of yourself into something, as is the case with quilting and other handicrafts, you want to make sure that aspects such as fabric selection are right from the start.

Pink and green, whether pale or bright in hue, is one of my favorite color combinations. I knew from the very start that this first quilt would use the pink / green color scheme. The quilt’s fabrics are not perfectly coordinated, and you would need to look closely at them to see how they are related colorwise.

With the exception of the two paisley prints, each one of the fabrics was purchased in a different store. The backing – a hand printed cotton fabric from India found at IE Boutique (Paris, 3rd arrondisement) – is not perfectly matched to the patchwork fabrics, but this was not my objective. I set out simply to have a quilt that looked good from both the front and back. The thread used to hand quilt – light pink on the light green paisley, olive green on the white paisley and bright pink on the olive green squares – pulls the patchwork colors together and does not compete with the print on the backing fabric.  

Given my status as complete quilting novice – plus the fact that I normally have a few craft or baking / cooking projects going on at any one time – this quilt took me several months to create. I am very happy with the finished product, but what I enjoyed the most was the entire creative process from conception to completion.