By Diane Harris, HQ Stitch Brand Ambassador

I have just finished a quilt that’s a gift for a very special family member. I’m taking it with me to the other side of the world on Wednesday.

This is the New Wave Quilt designed by Elizabeth Hartman and offered as a free quilt pattern on her website. It’s fast, easy and fun! It’s a nice throw size at about 51″ x 58″. I’ll link to the pattern at the bottom of this post.

I pieced and quilted it on the HQ Stitch 510 which is one reason it went so quickly. The piecing took me one long evening and the quilting took about three hours. I mean it when I say this machine is lightning fast. Not all patterns lend themselves to fast sewing but this one surely does.

Several months ago I pulled teal fabrics to start playing around. I don’t eliminate much at the beginning of a project. In a controlled scrap quilt, almost anything is fair game.

I want variety in scale, visual texture, type of print and even color. I wanted some teals that were more blue but also some that were more green. This is one of the key elements to a great scrap quilt: not having everything “match.” Matching is deadly.

I played around with an order. You always want each fabric to contrast in some way with its neighbors. For example, large motifs next to small motifs; round motifs next to stripes; something wild next to something demure. This kind of juxtaposition builds interest and keeps you looking at the quilt for longer.

At some point I had the idea to fussy cut one print, which turned out to be my favorite feature of the quilt. Those pineapples! Swoon.

And the birds. Adorable! I’m sure this is long out of print but it’s a Michael Miller fabric. If I could buy five more yards I would.

My design wall happens to be gray and I had planned to use gray as a neutral for the dividing strips, so it was a bonus that I got to see how the gray would look. I decided it needed some interest though, so I added the one hot pink row.

I quilted straight lines with the walking foot in the gray and hot pink rows. A variegated thread picked up the colors in the fabrics. I’ve learned that a thread doesn’t need to have exactly the same colors.

This thread contains lavender but you see the aqua and green areas and the lavender doesn’t even matter. I quilted big loops in the tumbler shapes.

A pretty medium teal homespun became the binding. You have to be careful about homespun because it can be stretchy which causes problems for binding. This one behaved nicely.

Coming in Part 2:
Backing and Labeling

New Wave Quilt free pattern!