The journey of a quilt from start to finish…

I began this ombré rail fence quilt back in October. I decided to hand quilt it, too, which took a long time but it’s finally finished! Scroll down for the story of this quilt in pictures.

I used a pre-made jelly roll to come up with the design but had to play with a lot of different combinations before I was happy with it.

Laying out the blocks to see how they look. I tried a couple of variations before I was happy. I actually ended up changing out the darker strips in the top row for lighter ones.

Sophie thinks it makes a perfect cat bed.

The backing fabric is also an all-over ombré pattern. I used the same fabric to make the binding, so the variation of light to dark fluctuates all around the quilt’s edge.

This quilt is such a celebration of light and color, I decided to name her Aurora, which has a double meaning, both for “dawn” and the Aurora Borealis.

My next few quilts are going to be darker thematically and aesthetically, but this quilt brought a lot of joy into my heart, like the others I’ve finished since the pandemic started. I think it’s what I needed to get through these tough months.