Rapid City

After I finished the lovely More Fishes for Cheryl's blog hop, I loaded up the next quilt, and then, my summer vacation started. I had such a nice time with lots of traveling around the country and memories made with my family as well as some solo trips for myself, but after I got back home, it was really hard to get back into the longarm room.

After a hiatus of about 4 months, I finally started machine quilting again. All this time I didn't really know what to do with the quilt, and I kept hoping an idea would come to me. But it didn't. It wasn't until I actually started quilting that I forced myself to come up with something.

Rapid City is designed by Elizabeth Hartman, and the fabric collection I used is leftover from my Cat's Eye quilt, First of Infinity by Kumiko Fujita. This whole quilt had such a graphic and urban vibe that I knew I wanted a very simple design mostly of straight lines. I allowed one curvy design: the ribbon candy, because I just really like the way it looks across long strips.

Elizabeth's designs are always intricate looking and the cutting instructions have brought me to tears at times due to their complexity. But once the dreaded cutting is over, I always have such a good time piecing her quilts. This one was no exception!

I love the texture of the straight lines running across the white fabric, as it always looks and feels scrumptious. For the border I did a simple piano keys design. It's not something I do very often, but for this quilt, it seemed fitting.

Since I love this pattern, and I love the fabric collection, I knew I was going to love the end result as well. And I absolutely do. Hopefully with me breaking through the post-summer slump quilt hiatus, the next one won't take quite so long to finish. In fact, I think I already know what quilt I want to quilt next and exactly how to quilt it. It's another Elizabeth Hartman!