Meadowsweet Quilt - An Easy EPP and Applique Quilt 4 Ways

The first version of Meadowsweet came about because I was using Rifle Paper Co's Primavera collection for a different quilt and I didn't like it! Rifle Paper Co's fabrics are stunning and floral and busy, and the quilt I was putting together just looked like mud. So I scrapped it, and decided to make a quilt that gave these stunning fabrics some space. I added fabrics from stash, chose a light pink background and loved the sweet florals all the more! When I ran out of pink, instead of buying more, I found this subtle screen-printed linen in my stash and it gave me the idea for a checkerboard layout. 

I just love how light and airy this turned out! It was a good lesson that sometimes, if you're willing to let a quilt that's not working go, something wonderful might come in its place!

Next, I wanted to experiment with a 2-colour version. Most of my 2-colour quilts are a single colour and a low volume scrappy complement, but here, I still wanted to see the individual petals that made up each flower. I combed my stash for true blues, inspired by blue and white china. And when I came up short, I found blues that were close, darker and lighter, slightly more aqua or periwinkle. I didn't know if using this spectrum would turn out like what I had in mind, but I was determined to use stash. Once I finished the flowers and set them on this white linen I had in my yardage, I was so pleased to find that even though the flowers were scrappy, and the palette not as strict as originally planned, that they still gave that delicate feel of blue I was hoping for. 

Because I used all the same background colour, I decided to give extra attention to the hand-quilting. I don't usually like to do fussy hand quilting. I love to quilt in long, simple, straight rows. But I wanted to give this quilt a little extra something. I'm so glad I did!

After finishing my pink version above, I knew I wanted to make a Meadowsweet in all scrappy, and I added that to my mental list, to wait until the idea was more fully formed. The formation came when I was digging through my yardage stash for backing and found this woven blue and aqua stripe by Ruby Star Society. Wouldn't it be fun to have a stripe for a background, and then, because the background for Meadowsweet is checkerboard, I could play with the stripe directions! 

Scrappy versions of my quilts always end up being my favourites, and this one is no exception. It's light and happy in the same way my first version is, but the colours, with the inclusion of deep pinks and purples, are completely me. 

When my mum saw me working on my latest version, she was inspired to make her own to go on the bed in their caravan. She wanted to use the quilt as a way of bringing a little extra colour to the space without being too noisy or busy. Mum and Dad's Caravan is already decorated with black and grey and hints of red in the curtains and seat covers, so we went through my stash for a matching black and grey and found them exactly in the warm tones of the woven Sprout collection by Fableism! From there mum picked out reds, teals, blues, and the very occasional pop of pink and green and made her flowers. She took care to keep flowers with navy petals with the grey backgrounds for maximum contrast. 

The result is a very soft, cosy quilt that fits in the caravan perfectly, bringing in some extra personality and colour, but not making the space feel even smaller.