Choosing a citrus-y orange color for the walls of our guest bedroom has turned it into what we call the “Florida” room, with cornflower blue and white as the accent colors. A modern style bed quilt has been on my “to do” list for quite some time, so I put the colors together and followed a design found on Nancy Zieman’s web site, called The Quilt to Give. I am not a fan of making large quilts, but decided to “stretch” myself a bit this year and learn some of the traditional quilting processes. Strip piecing is certainly an easy place to begin, especially when it is a quilt-as-you-go project. However, managing the backing, batting and strips all at once can be a challenge. I basted (by machine) the backing and batting every 8 inches vertically before I started to add the strips (at the center). You can see a bit of the process and the almost completed bed quilt in the pictures below. I still plan to add some overall quilting using my mid-arm Handi-Quilter, but it was a “quilt as you go” design, so the first level of quilting was completed as the quilt was pieced together. Additional quilting is optional, and I hope to soften the overall colors by added some overall quilting with a white thread. Enjoy!


