There’s Something Fishy Going On!

Hi Quilting Friends,

There’s something fishy going on around here!  Today we’re going beneath the waves to look at the colorful fish on our “Something Fishy” quilt.  So grab your swimsuit, snorkel, and fins, and let’s dive right in to investigate, before the fish get frightened and swim away.

The “Something Fishy” quilt pattern combines quick precision piecing techniques, foundation paper piecing, and a little bit of applique and embroidery in this adorable 40″ by 42″ quilt.  I enjoyed making this quilt, since I didn’t get tired of doing the same thing for the entire piece.  Wouldn’t this make a sweet gift for that new baby?

Susan actually chose most of the fabrics for this quilt, since she is our fabric acquisition expert.  I think that she did a fabulous job!  The block background (water) is a beautiful blue batik print with several sizes of “bubbles” in darker blues and aquas.  We wanted the fish to be bright and colorful, so their bodies were made from a delightful 10″ by 10″ layer cake packet of brightly colored prints, designed by Laurel Burch.  I probably have enough fabric left from my layer cake to make another fish quilt, if I wanted.  The kelp forest is a great green print that I had in my private textile collection (aka “stash”), and I love how it sparkles in the “water”.  The binding is a nice green Toscana blender from Northcott Fabrics.

The quilt pattern includes these cute little fish in three sizes; my quilt uses the small and medium fish.  I wanted to try the paperless paper piecing technique (see Susan’s blog post), but my freezer paper is really old and it wouldn’t stick to the fabric.  Drat!  Anyway, I gave up on that idea after several frustrating failures and switched over to traditional paper piecing.  I don’t mind taking out the paper shards while I watch TV with my husband, so it really wasn’t a hardship.  The fishy eyes and mouths were added after the blocks were all pieced.  I will probably make a small pillow with the large fish pattern, but I haven’t started that quite yet.  Too many projects, too little time!

I decided to try a vertical pieced strip to separate my fish blocks and add some interest to this project.  It seemed appropriate to make it look like kelp, and so I made a bunch of little HST squares using my favorite quick precision piecing technique, and then I played around with varying lengths of background strips to separate the triangle “leaves”, until I finally settled on this combination of shapes.

My quilting here is meant to look like the light rays streaming down, or perhaps ripples in the calm water of our little lagoon.  I used a beautiful variegated thread from Sulky, and I’m quite pleased with it.  So I guess that it isn’t necessarily a bad thing when there’s something fishy going on, right?  

I really enjoyed making this little quilt with its combined quilting methods.  Do you have a favorite quilting style?  Or, perhaps, a technique that you admire but haven’t tried yet?  I’d love to hear from you!

Thanks for visiting today!  I hope that you enjoyed seeing my latest creation, and that you’ll be back again soon.

Happy quilting,

Sharon

If you’re interested in making your own “Something Fishy” quilt, you can purchase the pattern right here!