my online friendship quilt

I've met some great friends, all because of this little blog. Friends that I would not have met otherwise. It's incredible to stop and think about it and I'm so thankful! It's because of a few of those friends that this quilt came to be (as I wrote about in this post).

Isn't it gorgeous?!??! I am absolutely smitten with this quilt! It's got such a variety of colors and prints. It's truly scrappy, which I love. I could make a hundred quilts like this!

Thankfully my friends buy dark value fabrics. I would say that most-if not all-of the fabrics I contributed were light or medium values. The darks really pop! I need to start being intentional about adding more dark fabrics to my stash and then using them. They add so much depth, so much interest to a quilt.

For the back I used this LOVELY fabric (Picnic Rose from the Darla line by Tanya Whelan) that I was saving for just the right quilt. I had bought 5 yards of it last summer because I loved it and I got a screamin' deal on it. I knew I would put it to good use at some point. There wasn't quite enough for this quilt, so I patched in a scrappy pink stripe right down the middle. It added just the right length for the backing. An added bonus, I didn't have to worry about lining up the repeat in the fabric. Hurray!

For the binding I used a black and white stripe, a la Rita. Tara and I found this when we were shopping together last February at Mill End. We called it 'Rita binding' immediately and we bought the rest of the bolt, then split it. (It is made by Cranston Village Quilt Works.) I didn't know if I would actually use it on a quilt, although I hoped to when I purchased it. I don't use a lot of black and white fabric in my quilts (or any, usually), so it was a stretch for me. Once I decided I was going to use the black and white stripe for the binding, it prompted me to add some black and white prints into the patchwork mix as well. I'm very pleased with the results!

The striped binding adds so much, even to the back of the quilt. 

I'm happy to say I had great success with my concentric amoeba quilting. It was fun to do, went fairly quickly and it gives the quilt lovely texture and movement. I'm planning to do more of this quilting design...it's definitely a keeper!

The quilt measures 64" x 88", a perfect twin size.