VeloCity Baby Quilt

A girl from my church is having her first baby.  Because her husband is deployed, and she doesn't have family in the area, she actually moved back home to be with her parents during her pregnancy.  So a few of us from church are putting together a "baby shower in a box" for her, and my contribution is a quilt.  I don't know Abbey super well, so I checked out the Pinterest page she made for ideas for the baby room.  That's where I saw this painting she pinned.

"Cave" by Michelle Armas

I decided to try to find a fabric line with similar colors to those in the painting, and that's when I stumbled across VeloCity by Jessica Hogarth for P&B Textiles.  I had seen this line before, but never had a reason to use it, so I was glad the colors fit in well with what I was looking for - it gave me a good excuse to buy some of it!

"Velocity" by Jessica Hogarth for P&B Textiles

And as far as a design for the quilt, I've said it before, and I'll say it again - inspiration strikes in weird places!  I was watching - of all things - a show on E! (don't judge me, please!), and during a commercial, there was a background of plus signs in different sizes.  So I sketched out a design, then went to cutting.  I'm calling this quilt, "Pluses Big and Small."  Here's the finished quilt front - 

 And back -

Here's the label -

For the quilting, I did continuous straight lines through all the pluses.  The areas that weren't quilted were a little puffy, so I knew something needed to go in those spots.  So I went with small scallops/clam shells.  This is my proudest quilting-on-a-home-machine moment!  And it was easier than I thought it would be.  Quilting those scallops in small sections made it very manageable, whereas quilting the whole thing on my little machine would have been a headache!  I love the texture created by both quilting designs.

And here's a shot of the binding.  I love the pop of green!

For the solid, I was worried about using a gray that would be too dark, and blend in with the dark gray print that I used.  I was also worried about using a white that would blend in with the white print I used.  So I went to my LQS, and started looking for Kona Ash, which they were out of.  But they did have this light gray Moda Bella.  I think the it's a perfect complement, because there are light gray elements peppered throughout a lot of the VeloCity prints.  

This one was hard to give away!  Thankfully, I have enough of the VeloCity left over, so one of these days I can make a copycat quilt to keep.