Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

This past weekend, I had the great fortune to go on a mini 3-day vacation with my sister. We rented a condo at the Oregon coast and had a great time sewing all day on different projects.

I brought one project in particular to finish during our retreat called “Sew Many Colors” to celebrate Aurifil USA’s 10th anniversary and designed by Whole Circle Studio! I love Aurifil thread and use it for all my piecing so naturally I just had to make this quilt.

I decided to feature ocean/sea glass colors in this mini so I could have a virtual tropical vacation whenever I look at the quilt. I used Kona White as both my background and the backing for the quilt. I wanted the thread spool colors to really stand out.

For the thread spools, I used these Kona Cotton colors: Jamaica, Niagara, Astral, Malibu, Mediterranean, Ultra Marine, Grasshopper, Cabbage, Parrot, and Cyan. I used a Kona Cotton charm pack for all these colors except 1 that I pulled from my stash.

The binding is a scrappy mix using the leftovers from paper-piecing the spools. I had just enough to complete the binding – whew! I really love the dimensional effect that scrappy binding gives to this mini quilt.

Since I was at the beach, I decided to be adventurous with my free-motion quilting by stitching a sand dollar shape using Aurifil #4654. This is a lovely green and blue variegated thread in 50 weight. For the background quilting, I did all over free-motion swirls using Aurifil 2024 in 50 weight, and it blended perfectly with the Kona White.

Sew Many Colors Mini Quilt

Close-Up of Sand Dollar Free-Motion Quilting

Sew Many Colors Mini Quilt Thumbnail

I am entering this mini quilt into a contest where you can vote! Voting runs from April 1st – 15th, 2017 on the Aurifil blog. Hope you’ll stop by and check out all the beautiful quilts!

Happy quilting,

~Jennifer