For the longest time, I’ve been wanting to do a color block quilt, I love love love the abstract quilt with a modern look and who is going to argue with less than 10 seams?!
Blocked is the April 2021 addition to the FREE baby quilt pattern vault and is now available!
It’s my 2021 mission to add lots of fun free baby quilt patterns to the vault and so far I’m loving the designs. My goal is to add quilt patterns that allow you to practice a variety of quilting skills and techniques so I’m working at adding patterns that are very different from each other.
With that I hope you like it! If you are interested in getting the free pattern or checking out the other additions, head to the free pattern vault here!
This One is Paper Pieced
And it’s definitely the largest paper pieced pattern I’ve personally ever used.
It wouldn’t be an abstract quilt without abstract angles, but I was struggling with how to make it reproducible in pattern form as everything I was coming up with was very improvisational.
Once I landed on paper piecing, everything started to simplify significantly.
While this is a large paper piece template, there is only one seam to each segment so if you’ve never done a paper pieced pattern before this is a great place to start!
Related:
How to Paper Piece for Flawless Blocks
For the Love of Kona Cottons
Whenever I work with solids, Kona Cottons by Robert Kaufman are my go to. I don’t even look around, I just go straight there.
The Kona solids have so many options and color shades to choose from that you are almost guaranteed to find the exact shade you are looking for every time.
Usually at box stores, the solids are so thin that you can actually see light through them, but I love that the Kona cottons have a great thick quality to their cotton that always quilts up beautifully.
If you are interested in seeing the exact shades I used, I included them all in the resources at the bottom of this post and if you want to check out the HUGE variety of Kona Cotton shades, you can find most of them here.
When in Doubt: Flannel Backing
If you’ve been around my blog for a while, you’ll know that one of my favorite backings for quilts is flannels. Especially for baby quilts.
When I started putting together this muted rainbow quilt top, all I could see for the backing was a classic black and white buffalo check, and why not in flannel.
I didn’t even both play around with other options, the buffalo check called to me I guess, but I think it goes really nicely with the muted solid colors on the front.
Binding
I did not get fancy at all with the binding. There is a lot of color and directions going on in this quilt and I needed something that would contain it all while not distracting from the fun angles.
Enter stage right, a flat black binding using a Kona cotton black that was the same black fabric used for the smallest portion of the quilt top.
The flat black did a great job framing out the abstract quilt top and didn’t add any additional chaos to the mix.
Echo Quilting
I really liked the angles in this quilt so for the quilting I wanted to accent it by straight line echo quilting of the pieces
Easy and quick but adds to the modern design of it with the varying angles. I like that it looks a bit fancier than just a typical straight line quilting all the way across.
As always though, my straight line quilting would be nothing without my quilting guide keeping me evenly spaced. If you are struggling to get straight lines that are evenly spaced, this little tool is like gold.
Check out the universal quilting guide that I use on Amazon here.
It’s FREE
As I mentioned in the beginning, this pattern is now FREE in the baby quilt pattern vault, so if you like this abstract quilt design and want to make your own be sure to head over there and grab your free pattern!
The baby quilt pattern vault is just a little section of my blog here where I’ve been putting some of my favorite easy baby quilt patterns for you to take advantage of. They only come in a baby or crib size pattern so if you are new to quilting and want a small project to get your feet wet, these patterns are hands down the best place to start.
There’s lots of other great patterns over there as well so if paper piecing isn’t your thing and you want to try something more traditionally pieced, there are plenty of other options there as well.
Head to the Free Pattern Vault here.
Resources
Pattern: Blocked Baby Quilt Pattern
Pieced/Quilted on: Singer Heavy Duty
Red: Kona Spice
Yellow: Kona Curry
White: Kona White
Green: Kona Ivy
Blue: Kona Cadet
Pink: Kona Shell
Black: Kona Black
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