TGIFF - Rippling

Welcome to the first Thank Goodness It's Finished Friday of July! It's time to celebrate our finishes and cheer each other on. After all, no one understands the joy of a finished quilt like another quilter.

Every other month I release a new pattern for Stash Artists members, and I'm excited to get to share this month's pattern, called Rippling. You know I had fun digging into my stash of blues for this one!

I had the hardest time naming this quilt. When I sent it to Yvonne for tech editing, I asked her for suggestions and she said it reminded her of "ripples formed in sand by lapping ocean waves." I can't believe I hadn't noticed that. There are already a couple of patterns named Ripples, so I went with Rippling. Thanks, Yvonne!

One of my goals again this year is to make more small quilts, which I define as anything baby size or smaller. With that in mind, I made a baby size Rippling quilt (the pattern also includes instructions for a throw size). Paul's nephew and his wife are expecting their first baby (a boy) in the fall, so Rippling will be his once he arrives. It feels great to already have it ready and waiting for him!

When I cut the blues, I skipped any fabrics that had distracting amounts of another colour. I did use a few fabrics with white, which I don't find as distracting as other colours.

This was the fabric that made me realize I had to limit the secondary colours. I cut it thinking the kites would be cute in a baby quilt, but really they were just distracting. The pink and yellow drew the eye, taking away from the rest of the quilt.

There are only two seams in each Rippling block. Yes, two! As you can imagine, the blocks came together quickly, and not long after that I had a quilt top.

A few weeks ago I said I've been leaning more towards open, all-over quilting designs lately. This quilt wasn't having any of that! It demanded custom quilting in each section. Sometimes you just have to listen to the quilt! Do your quilts make demands when it comes to choosing their quilting designs? 

I started by doing a small loopy meander in the white parts, using Aurifil 2021. You can see in this picture that the white isn't solid. I love blender fabrics that read as solid from a distance, but have a little something extra when you get up close.

I wasn't sure I had enough left on my spool of 2021, so I picked up a couple more spools when we were in St. John's for Aiden's graduation. Good thing, too. Look how close I was to finishing when I got to the end of the spool.

Of course, a few days later I opened the box where I keep my cones of Aurifil, only to find an almost full cone of white (2024) I had forgotten about. D'oh! At least I know I have lots of white on hand now 😂

Next I outlined the orange triangles and filled them in with back and forth lines using Aurifil 1133. I echoed the diagonal line about 1/4" away, too. Quilting such a bold line sure feels scary and every wobble seems magnified, but then it doesn't even show up from a distance or in pictures of the full quilt. There must be a life lesson in there about doing scary things.

I had left the blues for last because I didn't know how I wanted to quilt them, and the quilt wasn't making any more demands now that I was committed to the custom quilting. I pinned it up on my design wall for a couple of days while I thought about it. I kept coming back to wishbones, so that's what I did. I chose Aurifil 1158, which is a dark blue-grey that I find works nicely on a wide variety of blues.

I love how the quilting looks on the back! I haven't been doing as much of it lately, but this quilt has reminded me just how magical custom quilting feels.

With all those blues, I had to use a scrappy blue binding, too.

I took Rippling and another quilt to the beach when we went for a BBQ supper last weekend and roamed around taking pictures while Paul cooked our burgers. Someone had built this tiny inukshuk on a rock and it was too cute not to use as a photo prop.

I love taking quilts to the beach! Really, I just love being at the beach. This is one of my favourite supper time views, too, and we eat here quite a few times every summer.

That's my finish! What have you finished recently? Link it up below so we can celebrate the finish with you. Don't forget to visit some of the other links, too, so you can help them celebrate their finishes 😊

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