Last year my sister decided to buy a van and convert it into a small camper. She loves the mountains, and this tiny house on wheels would allow her to travel and set up camp very easily, so she and our dad worked weekend after weekend to build the interior. I wanted to give her a ‘housewarming’ gift, and decided a quilt would be suitable. Evenings in the mountains can be chilly, and who doesn’t like a cozy quilt anyway?
Because I wanted it to fit into her ideas perfectly, we made the design together. She wanted something with mountains in subdued and calm colours… We settled on a design of diagonal squares with stylized snow on the mountain tops, and a bit of grass in the foreground. Since I am not very proficient in elaborate piecing (I also don’t have the patience I think) everything is squares, triangles and rectangles. To add more visual interest I proposed to go with batik fabrics, and my sister picked the colours. That’s where the calm colours went out of the window, because Quiltshop-online has so many pretty choices. The pinks and reds represent mountains at sunset, and I liked the idea instantly.
Upon arrival of the fabrics, I fiddled a bit with the design, shuffled the mountains a bit back and forth, and started cutting. I don’t have any pictures of the process, but I started in the top right corner of the center piece and worked my way to the opposite corner in diagonal rows, always trying to keep the pieces as large as possible. Then I added the green strips for the grass. I had enough dark green left to add a border around the center to “close off” this part. Without this border the front would have looked more pale, and I think this was the best decision.
The quilt was still a bit small to be a decent lap size quilt, so I added a simple white cotton border to solve this. The quilt was then batted with a cotton batting and a blue-grey back with a honeycomb-like pattern. I used a meandering freeform stitch to quilt the blanket. It looks nice, and saves the effort of perfectly stitching on the lines of your quilt. Then I used the back fabric for a narrow border, and the blanket was done!
Below are two more pictures of a happy camper and her blanket. Dear sis, I hope you enjoy your camper, trips and blanket for many more years to come!
Dutch Sewing Scientist 