31 Days - Day 20: Seeing double

A simply delightful young couple from one of the Balkan states (Romania, I think) attended my former church for a few years while Petio was enrolled at the medical college, as a medical examiner student. He and Zhasmina had a son who was about nine at the time.

Imagine their surprise when they found out they were going to have twins!

I was crazy enough at the time to make two different quilts, one for each twin. Both quilts are from kits purchased on a day trip to a quilt shop near Madison.

Twin # 1

The first quilt has a dozen bright, simple butterflies as the center. And I do mean bright. The antennae are satin stitched onto the finished block.

The quilt is heavily quilted in the blocks around the butterflies with a meander. If you can enlarge the picture significantly, you'll see a spiral repeating in the narrow yellow border, and leaves creeping around in the green one. The final border is also done in a puzzle meander.

The size on both of these quilts is a bit smaller than the full 45 x 60 inch crib size. I think they finished about 36 x 50.

Twin #2

The second quilt has just a little more piecing work, as the wild goose chase border (the bright triangles around the outside) needed to be put together. The center of the quilt is actually a preprinted panel.

Again, this is heavily quilted, particularly in the center, where there were no seams to run over. Each item in the panel is outline stitched. The sheep are filled in with little spirals and curls where they have wool.

I find that if you have the right kind of batting and a quilt top that doesn't have a lot of seams, heavy quilting seems to soften the quilt, make it drape better (and wrap around little kids more easily).

Some other dear friends had twins a few years ago, but I couldn't get myself put together enough to complete one quilt, much less too. Maybe over Christmas vacation this year, if I can get a couple of other things done first...