Tiger Lily

Back in 2018, while decorating my studio lounge area with midcentury modern furnishings, Kona came out with their fabric of the year called "Tiger Lily."  I instantly feel in love with this strikingly orange colored fabric and the free pattern from Kaufman called Terrace was my inspired me.  It's like a perfect accompaniment for my mid-century decorating project.  Not only did the color and fabric call my name, but the name "Tiger Lily" is my cat's name.  How could the stars align any better?

Here is my Tiger Lily, and of course she loves snoozing on my quilts.

I excitedly pieced the quilt top together within a couple weeks and hung it temporarily on the wall behind my couch so I could decide just how I wanted to finish it.  Well almost two years has passed and I decided it was time to get this UFO checked off my to do list.  I debated if I should just stretch it on wood stretchers like a painting and do no quilting or if I quilted it - would I quilt the orange or white areas or both.  A lot of thinking went back and forth for those two years.  My final decision was to do minimal quilting in the orange areas and if afterwards I felt the white areas needed some quilting I could always add it.

So now that I decided on my plan the next obstacle was finding the orange thread.  I bought three different orange threads that weren't the right shade.  The color distracted from the quilt design.  I even looked online for threads that matched Kona fabric, but Tiger Lily was not a thread color option.  After hunting for a couple months I found an orange thread at Hobby Lobby that matched perfectly.  Since there isn't as much white it looks great with no quilting on the white fabric.  I quilted it on my long arm quilter using a straight ruler using straight lines longwise.  Needless to say I got better at using my quilting rulers.

Notice on the couch is a pillow in the same fabrics.  With the scraps from cutting out the Terrace quilt I assembled a pillow.  On the pillow I quilted only the white fabric.

Well the quilt is finished and now hangs on my wall.  It is striking with the white contrasting wall.  I soooo love it.  Another mission accomplished.  

With fall a few weeks away and temperatures cooling off it will be time to refocus on my quilting projects.  I noticed September is National Sewing Month so what better month to put the pedal to the ground but now.