The Florida Quilt 🌴

The Florida Quilt 🌴 is a quilt that I made for my niece and godbaby, Tiffany. She's getting married in May.  She grew up in Florida, so, I made this quilt using hand dyed batiks in all the colors of the beach and skies of tropical Florida.  

The pattern is one that I've used before.  It's a log cabin with a twist.   As you sew rectangles around the square in the middle you trim them off at an angle giving the finished square a wonky touch.  Some call this a hippie quilt.  Only instead of jean material, velvet, satin, beads and ribbons I used hand dyed batik material.  

In the past I used my own templates to cut each round off at an angle. But Creative Grids now has a 10" Wonky Log Cabin Trim Tool.  This works the same as my hand drawn templates and finishes with a perfect 10" square.  It's a very easy tool to use.  

I chose not to do much quilting on this quilt because I wanted it to be more cuddly than the normal quilt.  The more stitches used to quilt a quilt the stiffer the quilt becomes.  At least, until it's washed a zillion times.  So, I chose to just stitch in the ditch around the pattern to showcase those wonky angles.

I did have trouble this time with my stitches on the longarm.  Everything was going great and then the stitches started skipping. I was using MicroQuilter thread and I thought it might be dried out so I added thread oil to a "sponge" on the machine.  The thread runs through the oil and then isn't so dry.  That seemed to work for awhile but then went back to skipping.  I just had to work with it.

I used Quilters Dream Orient Batting which is a blend of bamboo and silk and is very soft and pliable.  

I hope my niece enjoys her quilt!  Remember to pick up a needle and thread and stitch some love into your world❣️

                            Master Quilt Holder in action!