Brrr! converging corners quilt (and a giveaway!)

I’m excited to have this quilt finished and ready to show to you! I had a chance to work with some of Laurie Wisbrun‘s upcoming line for Robert Kaufman, Brrr!  The line features Laurie’s super cute polar bears in two colorways along with great coordinating prints. You could make really wonderful wintery items with this line (and I’ll have a little something wintery to show you soon!), but I wanted to show how they could be incorporated with your other fabrics for a great year-round quilt!

I paired these great prints with some of the circles from Laurie’s Modern Whimsy line (a great basic!) and a few other basics from my stash. You can find the tutorial for my Converging Corners block here, in case you should want to make one of your own.

I made one large converging corners block for the backing, and often happens, I’m quite taken with the backing, maybe even more than the front?

I think it’s a fun backing, and gave me an opportunity to show off a few more polar bears! (Unfortunately I don’t know of any polar bears in Vermont, so this photo shoot is not quite as cool as that one with llamas!)

For the quilting I tried to channel a bit of Angela Walters. I had the opportunity to get a sneak peek at her new book, Free-Motion Quilting with Angela Walters, which will be available in the next couple of months. It’s a wonderful book – I read it cover to cover and immediately wanted to quilt something. I have been feeling a bit tired of the usual meandering, so it was great to read Angela’s idea for other free motion quilting patterns and ideas.

In quilting this quilt, I opted for a bit of a cross between a floral pattern Angela described in her book and a favorite Marimekko sketchy floral pattern. I quilted a large scribbly flower right in the center of each of the converging corners. I wanted to go all Angela Walters on this and add in a second design in the open squares, but after attempting it and having to rip it all out, I ended up going with the same floral design but on a smaller scale. I hope you can see a bit of it in the close-up photo above. Unfortunately, after a wash, the floral pattern is less obvious, but gives this quilt great texture. I’ll definitely be attempting this design again!

It’s all bound in my favorite Kona Cerise and measures about 45″ x 55″.

And now, how about a giveaway? Would you like a chance to win these fabrics before you can even buy them? Laurie Wisbrun and the kind folks over at Robert Kaufman have sent along a fat quarter stack of the entire line for one lucky winner.

Please just leave a comment on this blog post (as always, one per person, please!) to be entered to win. I’ll select a winner on Friday!

Update: Comments are now closed. I’ll select and announce a winner shortly!