Amelia: A Leaders and Enders Quilt

While my last leaders and enders quilt took about eight years to finish, I'm pleased to announce that this iteration only took four months to create.  Presenting, Amelia!

I don't personally know any Amelias; the quilt is based on the Amelia pattern from the book Zero Waste Quilting by Patty Murphy.  I used Patty's color placement guide, but upsized my half square triangles (HST) to make better use of my scraps, as well as added a row to the bottom to make it slightly less square.  This quilt was easier than my last leaders and enders quilt because I wasn't worried about the fabrics being unique; instead I was worried about using up the scraps in my scrap bins.  I also dipped my charm square stash (I like to buy charm square stacks to add variety to my scrappy projects) and, in a few rare cases, cut into fat quarters to get the color balance that I wanted.  I selected the fabric for about 5-10 HSTs at a time, then sewed them together as the breakpoint between chunks of chain piecing in my other projects.  And of course I sewed the HSTs together as I went along!  

The back of the quilt is a soft navy blue flannel and I quilted it myself with a freehand meander in a light gray thread on my domestic machine.  The binding is black with a navy box print on it.  I was having a terrible time getting them to photograph correctly.  The photo above is slightly over exposed to show the print and the photo below uses the duck to "trick" my phone camera into not auto-adjusting the color and making the back of the quilt look gray.  It's really very pretty in person!

And there you have it, the first of my three summer quilt projects!  The other two quilts were sent out to be long-armed and are currently in the binding stage - I will share them soon!