Fiona Learning to Quilt her Version of the Calypso Carnival's Quilt

I'm so exceedingly proud of my daughter, Fiona, who made this quilt top back in 6th grade and has now (age 19) quilted it. To see when she made the top, click here.

There was a lot of thinking and planning that went into how to quilt it. Being a perfectionist, as I am,  she wanted something simple, yet custom quilting. That's a tall order for someone who has never used a longarm before, but we planned a design that we thought would fit the bill.

I taught her ruler work on a practice quilt (not shown) and after about an hour, she was ready enough. Our time was very limited because she was leaving for an 18 month mission trip in less than 2 weeks. Time to just DO IT!

Our quilt path could have been easier if we had switched back and forth between straight rulers and curved rulers, but I figured it would be easier to get good at the skill by doing just the straight lines before moving one to the curved.

This video was taken when she was almost finished, but you can see how easy she makes it look.

I'm so proud of her!

Just finishing up the borders which we hadn't decided how we wanted them to be when she started quilting. 

Quilt is off the frame and my daughter and mother look at it.

A close up on the quilting. Many suggested a crosshatch design, but to do just diagonal lines didn't accentuate the colored blocks, and the sashing threw a monkey wrench into many of the ideas we came up with.

After having designed what we wanted to do, and in fact, after having quilted it, while I was answering questions about where the pattern came from, I searched for the Calypso Carnival Quilt (after hunting for what the name of the quilt was, since we made our pattern based on a photo she had seen), I was surprised at how they had chosen to quilt the quilt.

Can you see the quilting? It's almost identical to ours. We stitched in the ditch around the dark blue squares while they did an X, but other than that, we separately came up with the same design. Obviously the perfect compliment for the pattern.

The binding we have choses is a dark blue to match the small squares. She will finish it when she comes home from her mission trip in a year and a half.