Minty coral plus quilt {and the cure for quilter’s block}

Looking to overcome a major case of quilter’s block, I turned to my trusty fabric bins for some much needed color therapy.

This Spring, I’ve been seeing a lot of minty blues and greens alongside pink and peachy corals (aka my newest color palette obsession). Feeling inspired, I dug through the depths of my stash to see what I could come up with. And as always, I was not disappointed!

I pulled several different fabrics, but the final roundup consisted of a cool minty blue, purchased six years ago from a remnant bin in Oakland, CA (which was instantly forgotten about) and scraps of an even older coral colored fabric that I found in a fabric shop in San Francisco. For the background, I chose one of my favorite vintage florals that I thrift-scored from a Texas Goodwill last Spring (which has become exceedingly difficult to use sparingly – try as I might).

I decided to go with a plus pattern and started arranging the fabric up on my newly assembled design wall (yay!). I initially wanted to stagger the plus shapes, off-centering the coral. Instead, I chose to equally space them apart, placing the coral in the lower corner to add visual interest.

And because I try to use as much of my fabric as possible, I almost always manage to include my signature franken-flair, a term I’ve appropriately used to describe my unconventional method of use-it-don’t-lose-it scrap piecing (as pictured below). 😜

I went with a cross hatch quilting design and thought it would be interesting to use a coral colored thread for the back, but due to tension issues that I didn’t feel like figuring out, I ripped out the coral, went with white instead and am insisting on seeing how long I can ignore the tension issue. 😊

I decided to border the inside of the plus in gold, my first time using metallic thread in a quilt, with much success! I’m pretty sure I held my breath the entire time though.

I went with an upcycled off-white cotton flannel for the back – and for the binding, I used this incredibly soft striped fabric from my stash, which oddly enough, included mint, white pink and coral (even a browninsh-golden color). This was also the first time I’ve used striped fabric for binding and pssst… loved it!

I know there’s a slight possibility I may sometimes say this every time (and yes, I’ve fully accepted the mystifying nature of this sentence) but this is hands-down my absolute most favorite new quilt of all time. Even though it insists on photographing more green in natural light (she’s a saucy little broad). 🌺➕🌿

xo.a