Prince Charming for a Princess

It's time for Blogger's Quilt Festival again! This is my second round participating, and I have a really special quilt to share. I made this quilt recently for one of my closest friends.

This quilt is for Stephanie, one of my best friends, who is expecting her third baby and her first girl! I had a rough time starting this project because I wanted it to be perfect. I have been itching to create a zig zag quilt for awhile, so I decided to start there. The directional prints in the Prince Charming line were a challenge, but I love how this quilt turned out!
I have had this zig zag quilt pinned on my pinterest board, and I love how the white zig zags are narrower than the colored zig zags. I found a really great Pat Bravo teal solid that matched the Prince Charming line, and decided to use the solid for the narrower zig zag. As I pieced the quilt together, I decided that I didn't like keeping the prints organized in the zig zags, though. The directionality of the prints was a lot more distracting in that layout, so I mixed up the prints and kept the solid zig zags consistent.
Once the top was pieced, I struggled with the quilting. The perle cotton hand quilting craze inspired me, but the perle cotton that I bought was too heavy. I tried to hand quilt a few zig zags, and it was just impossible to pull the thread through the quilt layers without straining my hands a ton! I started bouncing some ideas off of my running/quilting/chatting/drinking friend, and she suggested quilting diagonal lines contrary to the diagonal pattern of the zig zags. I chose to quilt the lines sparingly, because Stephanie recently told me that she liked the softness that is lost in dense quilting.

So, here's the quilt!

 Do you see the binding in the upper righthand corner? I was short by 1 binding strip, and the shop was sold out of the teal solid when I went back. I decided to use one of the darker prints from the top, even though it wasn't my favorite. I think the dark print was a great choice, though, because it seems to blend in well!

For the backing I used part of a thrifted bed sheet. It was so nice to not have to piece together a backing!

 A pumpkin and a quilt. Can you spot the garden gnome?

I sent this quilt off with some cute little girlie summer clothes (for next year) and a pair of newborn longies. After 5 years of dinosaurs and firetrucks, I'm sure this package was just the beginning of the pink!

As soon as the package arrive Steph let me know that she loves the quilt and her boys had a great time digging through the baby things and admiring the tiny girl clothes. I can't wait to see them love on their baby sister!