Jackie Brown

For such a straightforward quilt, this one has been in progress for an awfully long time.

Oh, sure. The whole thing was smack dab in the middle of Ellie and her funky first months and my total lack of time, as well as physical and emotional energy. But the longer I had it in the works, the more I second-guessed myself. I wasn’t sure about the colors, the design, the whole thing. It’s like when you stare at a word so long, it starts to look misspelled.  Thankfully, good sense prevailed and I finally finished it.

It is now in the hands of three-month-old Jacqueline (whose middle name is Brown, and I simply cannot resist calling her Jackie Brown in my head), and happily it is much loved. Jackie is the baby sister to Marcella, recipient of my much-beloved purple-and-green zig-zag from two years ago.

I made it from a jelly roll of Tweet Tweet by Keiki for Moda, which I had in my stash. I thought it was a good fit for my friend and her daughters – kind of sweet and playful, but relatively strong primary colors and not overly girly.  The design came from a Moda Bake Shop tutorial, though I simplified it somewhat and just used 27 strips from the jelly roll instead of getting all crazy with an extra charm pack and the exact pieced back as in the pattern.

Speaking of the back, I’m pretty happy with it. It was a fun way to use up some of the remaining jelly roll strips and some coordinating solids. I wasn’t 100% sure on the solid brown, but I had enough of it in my stash and there was plenty of brown in the prints, so I went for it. I am much happier with it post-quilting, because I think the white thread softens it up a bit. And, it’s a fairly practical choice for a quilt that I know will see plenty of use. I mean really, was I going to put white on the back?

Only a few months behind schedule, sweet Miss Jackie has her quilt. When my friend called to say thanks, she mentioned how sad it made her to think she’d eventually have to let her girls take their quilts away. I promised to make her a quilt of her own someday… just as soon as all of our friends are done having babies!