Snowflake Temperature Quilt

While I was putting the binding on this little lap quilt, I tried to think of all the quilts I've made that were difficult to part with because I loved them so much. This one was such an absolute joy to create, I knew before I even began stitching it would be one of my most favorites.

But I have created many other quilts I have loved. I'm still trying to decide if this one tops any of them. Here's my top thirteen (because I couldn't pick just 10 and because 13 is my lucky number) until last week, when I finished the January 2021 Temperature Quilt cheater panel. I decided I need to review my favorites to see just where this one falls.

13. Pieces of Braid

I love this tiny wall quilt because it was the first quilt I made entirely with leftovers. The ocean spray green was leftovers from a dress I made back in the '80s. I loved the color so much, I couldn't get rid of the scraps! I had a bunch of triangles left over after my first braid, which was incorporated into Welcome to the Jungle. I liked those little scraps, too, and this is how I used them. This quilt also was the first successful fancy free-motion quilted project I ever finished. I'd started many but hadn't finished because my skills were so untamed.

12. Andrew and Mariah's Quilt, Guitar Man, front and back

I think this was the second free-motion quilted project I ever finished, and looking at it now, gosh, eight years later, now that I have a longarm, I still can't believe I quilted a quilt that big with that fancy of designs on a domestic machine! The design, which I've seen similarities to in other quilts now, was totally my own design, and I'm still amazed I came up with the idea to incorporate guitars after piecing a gradient rainbow stripe because I just wanted to see what it would look like.

11. Opposites

This one is more recent and was done with the longarm. I love this one because the panel on the front is so awesome, because I finally got the guts to see what the longarm could do and because I think it was brilliant to splatter the back with bright color.

10. Zariah's Quilt, Charmed by Snowflakes

I love this quilt because it's filled with many of the blue snowflake fabrics I've collected over the last three decades and because it was my first quiltalong on my blog. And because, well, it has snowflakes.

9. Snowbike (the original)

This sweet baby took so long, I wasn't sure I'd ever finish it. I designed and crocheted all those snowflakes, and I appliquéd them after drawing a bicycle on the background fabric with a blue chalk marker that didn't totally come out after washing. And the batik I used on the back bled through the stitching on the front when I washed the quilt in an effort to get rid of the chalk stains. I'd planned to enter the quilt in the Denver National Quilt Festival, which doesn't even exist now. The quilt was difficult to look at for a long time because it took so much, and the finish caused such heartache. But now, I really love this quilt, booboos and all. Plus, it has snowflakes! (I went on to design a Spoonflower panel to match, but this quilt is 1,000 times better. Or more. Because appliqué is genuine effort.)

8. Kaela's Quilt, Hearts of Gold

This is another one that was a lot of work and took a long time. All those hearts are appliquéd. But the quilt (inspired by one of Debbie Kratovil's block-a-day calendars) was so beautiful, I created cheater panels on Spoonflower so I could make more without all the work. Ha ha!

7. Lyra's Quilt, Daylight

And here is one of those cheater panels! Initially, I called this panel Heartless because it didn't have hearts, and that was a cute name. It didn't seem like a very appropriate name when I decided it would be Lyra's quilt. I didn't take the fast and easy route when trying to make the fat quarter big enough for a lap quilt. I pieced all those triangles! With scraps leftover from Kaela's Quilt! I didn't often use white as a background fabric then because I was afraid things beneath the flimsy I did't want to show up would, so Lyra's quilt was way outside my comfort zone. I really had to work hard to give this one away once it was finished! I wanted to keep it for myself!

6. One More Ticker Tape

This is another one made with leftovers, and the design is totally mine. It was fun to make, and it was fun to look at after I finished. But I cannot remember what became of it. I hope it went to someone who loves it as much as I did.

5. Ticker Tape

I haven't given this one away, and I don't think I ever will. All those little scraps are from projects I'd worked on during the course of three decades. It includes tiny pieces from dresses I made when I first learned to sew as a child. It has remnants from clothes and quilts I've made for cousins, nieces, nephews, brothers and sisters. Some of the projects I made from those scraps don't exist anymore. So I have to hang onto the quilt. This is a record of what I did my first 30 years of sewing.

4. A Lizard for My Lizard

This was a Christmas present for my husband in 2017. It's another of my Spoonflower fabric panels from a real photograph I snapped while hiking in Rattlesnake Canyon with him years earlier. I'm always too busy with work to make much of anything during November and December, and I had to sneak in time working on this in order to finish it by Christmas Eve. He caught me working on it a couple of times, but later told me all he saw was orange. He had no idea I was making something for him. He thought I was trying to hide that I had started a new project before finishing my WIPs. (This one was on my official WIP list at the time.) I wish I could create such artistic borders for every panel quilt I make.

3. Tierza's Quilt, Rainbow Strip Bar

This one was a redo of one I'd made several years earlier in a jelly roll challenge with a dear friend. The first one had unwanted curves in the piecing because I'd never pieced strips before. The second one doesn't, but it does have even more of my own design elements than the first one did. It's colorful, it's bright, it's happy, and oh, how I loved making and admiring this one!

2. Ada's Quilt, Owl Be Striped

I'm not sure I can ever top this one. I realized one day I had many rainbow solids, so I decided to make a jelly roll rainbow. After I pieced the rainbow, the flimsy wasn't big enough to be a lap quilt, and it was sort of an odd size. So I added a panel and appliqué, and this is another quilt I loved making and adoring when it was done.

1. Colorado's 14ers

This was my first attempt ever to be juried into a quilt show. Emergency back surgery temporarily sidelined me from cycling, hiking and backpacking, and I spent my off-season turning my photos from my favorite adventures into a quilt. I pre-treated the fabric, cut it into 8x10 pieces, ironed it onto wax paper, printed the photos on a little home printer, post-treated and washed the blocks, hand-lettered the photo captions on fake denim, hand-embroidered the captions using floss I inherited from my grandmother, machine pieced the quilt and then hand-quilted it. I then added the binding, sleeve and label on the back by hand. And my first attempt made it into the 2007 Denver National Quilt Festival! It also hung at the Colorado State Capitol two years later. And now, it's draped over the stairway railing, waiting (still, after 12 years) to hang in the house we bought the same year the quilt hung at the Capitol!

So, now that I've had a fun trip down memory lane, I've decided the temperature quilt is my new second favorite.

One of the reasons I love it so much is because I used up some of my favorite Spoonflower fat quarters for the back. I have to buy a fat quarter of my Spoonflower designs before I can sell them, if they sell. Often, I don't know what to do with the fat quarters I have printed, so I have a big stack of them that now is four fat quarters shorter!

I loved my Hexie Madness designs so much, I ordered an additional couple of yards of my favorite so I could make a dress, which I still wear. The leftovers from that dress went into the binding on this quilt. Because I didn't have enough of the blue snowflake fabric leftovers I'd also designed and printed via Spoonflower for the entire binding.

The Spoonflower fat quarters were not big enough by themselves to back the full yard of January 2021 Temperature Quilt fabric, so I added some of my leftover stash blue snowflake strips (not my designs). Initially, I was going to use more of the blue snowflake stash for the binding. But when I saw how well my previous Spoonflower fabric harmonized with the newest Spoonflower fabric, well, there was no contest.

Of course, what I love best about this quilt is that it has snowflakes! And because it is my design. And my design. And my design... I photographed my crocheted snowflakes (which I designed) on different batik fabrics to create a digital temperature quilt because I knew I should not start another project until I finish most of my current WIPs and because many people have said they got bored with their temperature quilt projects before the year ended.

Unfortunately, after finishing the first segment of the digital quilt, I was SO in love with it, I nearly fell to the temptation to make a REAL snowflake temperature quilt. Spoonflower helped me curb the desire a tad, but it wasn't until I finished the May digital segment I realized I didn't really like my summer temperature color scheme and finally (temporarily) abandoned the idea of crafting a real snowflake temperature quilt. For now!!! I may revise my color scale at some point so I can make a real snowflake temperature quilt with colors I don't get tired of using!

Before I decided to use the Hexie Madness fat quarters for the quilt back, I wished I'd had the February digital quilt segment printed via Spoonflower, too, so I could use it for the backing. I love this quilt so much, I may go ahead and create more Spoonflower cheater panels from some of the digital temperature quilt segments I've finished. The straight-line quilting on my domestic machine (because I can't draw straight lines with the longarm yet) was fast and easy, so it wouldn't take long to finish more quilts just like this. And heaven only knows I NEED three or four more snowflake temperature quilts in my life!

Linking up with Alycia Quilts and Confessions of a Fabric Addict.

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