Crab Apples quilt

 This time my inspiration came from few photos of crab apples. I’ve been thinking of making a diptych of crab apples: blossoms and fruit. Somehow I’ve started from fruit first, blossoms have to wait, I hope not till the next spring.

My friend Nijole has three crab apple trees in her garden. Recently she sent me this photo:

Then few days later my friend Linda posted this photo on her Facebook page:

I was hooked and started by selecting fabrics for apples:

And started making improvised log cabin blocks:

I moved on making more and more of them and then I needed to select fabrics for a green background. I wanted a background to have light and dark and medium values of green and some of grays:

These were different blocks and I moved on making them and filling spaces on my design wall. At the same time I kept adding more crab apples:

Finally I felt that I had enough and that design looked quite balanced:

A close up of my design wall:

Now I had to figure out how to sew everything together. The construction of this kind of design is always quite challenging but finally I had it all in one piece.

The next step was my favorite- machine quilting. I always feel very relaxed when quilting. I let my mind to fly and dream of upcoming quilts while my hands move the quilt freely under the needle.

I selected few colors of thread and started quilting:

Then I realized I needed more colors:

Finally it is all quilted:

All I had to do now was to square the quilt up and add binding. The binding is not showing  on the front:

It was fun making this quilt and I look forward to making Crab Apples Blossom quilt next.