Rainbow Quilt

Brandon has been asking me to make him another quilt for well over a year.  I found lots of different quilt ideas and asked Brandon to pick one.  He loved this one.  I LOVE the colors, but I still don't understand the whole puff quilt thing.  He wanted it very similar and loved the fabric colors, so I then started hunting for fabric in June.  Yes, I have been working on this for over 6 months.  The color fabric is all from Riley Blake Designs collection.   I drove to MANY quilt shops before finding some of the fabric in Pella, IA .  Although to be honest, I mostly went for the bakery and didn't actual think I'd find my fabric!  The white fabric I used on the front is from JoAnn's and it is white with white circles on it.  The back of the quilt is plain Kona white fabric.

So, here's what I did.  The color squares were cut at 4.5 inches and the white strips are 1.5 inches wide.  I sewed the white onto the top and bottom of each color square and then came back and sewed 1.5 strips on to each side.  Using a quarter inch seem, the finished size of each block ended up being 6 inches (the color is 4 inches, and the white is an inch all the way around).  

After laying them out and deciding on my pattern, I sewed them together from top to bottom (which is actually left to right in this picture).  Once I had all 11 columns done, I sewed them together making sure to like up seems as best I am able.   To sandwich it together, I used plain cotton batting.

I completely put this  quilt together with my plain old sewing machine.  I machine quilted a line straight across touching a colored square, once where the two white strips lined up, and once again on the top of the next colored square, so between each colored square there are 3 lines straight across (and up and down) on the quilt.  I used a 3 inch double binding and sewed it first to the back of the quilt and then used a zig-zag stitch to bind it on the front.  I ended up having the kiddos write their names on a colored block and I hand stitched them into the quilt.  It isn't the most readable, but it added a nice personal touch. The quilt is roughly 66 by 84 inches.  I love this quilt so much that I wish I would have made it king size for our bed, but Brandon is very thankful that this blanket is just for him.