A day before the Rock ‘n’ Roll half marathon in Portland, my husband and I went on a bike ride to explore the city— we saw so many cool things. One memorable sight was an old neighborhood that had four rose gardens in it’s center (this is where I took pictures of the Garden Star quilt). Our further biking exploration led us to a strip with a few local shops. We found a funky second hand store where I fell in love with a rug that I found (also my inspiration for this quilt). So I took a picture of it and hoped that one day I would make something like it.

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When I found out a childhood friend was getting married, I decided I wanted to do something special for her. From me, loved one’s usually get quilts as wedding presents or baby gifts however, if you’re my niece or nephew at some point you will get a quilt as well. My current niece/nephew scorecard is six done and six still to go (… so much still to do).

Anyways, since this was my childhood friend I really wanted to do something that I’ve never done before, like a signature quilt. This was the perfect opportunity to make one since we were going to have a bridal shower for her.

 

When I started researching signature quilts and saw this design I thought “oh yeah!” But I wanted to make sure she would like it, so I gave her three to four options of quilt designs and she narrowed it down to two. Then I asked her what color scheme she preferred and she said grey. This caught me off guard since I’ve never done a grey quilt, nor have I done a quilt with just one color, but I was up for the challenge. The search for a fabric pallet that I liked was a bit difficult, but I did it.

 

I completed the blocks before her shower and it was a hit! The blocks were signed by the guests and now all I had to do was put the quilt together.

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I will say, I had a hard time deciding how to arrange the blocks. My options were: 1) I could randomly spread out the different tones of fabric or 2) I could keep them together. I decided to keep each fabric in the same row. I think the row with the darkest grey fabric pop out. Personally, I think this made the quilt look really modern. Sadly,I missed the wedding, but I will be shipping this memorable quilt out soon.

 

In the end I had 10 blocks left over. I plan to add yellow and purple fabrics to bring me to 25 blocks so I can make another quilt from this design… since there’s no such thing as wasting fabric!