Here it is—my “Breezy Day” lap quilt. The name was inspired by the fabric in the quilt, rather than the quilt’s design. IF I’d gone with the quilt design, it might have been “Stars on the Stairs”. At least, that what it looks like to me!

There is straight line quilting along the long white diagonals—just under the “stairs” as it were! The quilting starts at 1/2 inch between the lines of stitching, decreases to 1/4 inch and then 1/8 inch “match stick” over 6 rows of stitching. It will create great texture to the quilt once it has been washed.

I had a hard time deciding what to do with the large half square triangle blocks. The diagonal stitches run through the light side of the half square triangle block, but there was still a large section of the block without any quilting. The floral fabric design is so organic, that I didn’t want all the quilting be be straight line.

If finally decided to go with a free-motion quilted large spiral in the dark green block and echo that with a 1 inch spiral in the light half of the block. I love it!

Spiral Free-motion quilting and match stick straight line quilting

I did a stitch-in-the-ditch with my walking foot around each of the stars. I started in one corner of the central square, stitched around the square and then around the star points. This made it possible to quilt the entire star without stopping until it was completed quilted. This works on a small quilt with my domestic sewing machine but would be a struggle with a large quilt. On a large quilt, it would be better done free-motion or on a long-arm machine.

The fabric on the back of the quilt is an irregular linear grid design which I think is a perfect complement to the organic floral design fabric on the front of the quilt.

So that’s it—a lap quilt from design to completion.