Triangle Quilt – Part 1

Last week I started working on a quilt for Emma. With her first birthday fast approaching, it just seemed wrong that I haven’t made one for her yet! I’ve seen several different versions of triangle quilts online but they all seemed a little too busy, with different prints going every which way. But then I came across this lovely pink and black version from see kate sew. And then I remembered I had two packs of fat quarter solids in a rainbow of colors — one set of soft colors and one set of bold colors — that I ordered several months ago during a sale, figuring I would find a use for them at some point.

Eureka! All of the hemming and hawing I’ve been doing about coming up with the perfect quilt for Emma ended, and I immediately decided to make her a triangle quilt using different shades of blue, teal, and purple.

I bought a triangle ruler, which made the cutting SO easy! Each triangle is 6 1/2 inches tall, which means once they’re sewn together they’ll be 6 inches tall. The finished quilt will have 14 triangles across and 6 rows, for a finished size of just about 36×36. I’m still debating whether I want to add an additional row, which would make it more like 36×42, but we’ll see. In the end, I think I want it to be small enough that Emma can use it as some sort of security blanket if she wants — versus sizing it to be used in her crib.

I liked how the pink and black quilt I mentioned earlier had one subtly patterned fabric in it, so I also cut pieces from three printed fabrics — some Sweet Tea Scrabble Turquoise that I’ve had sitting around since the fall, some leftover teal polka dot from Emma’s family album, and some leftover light blue starry print from the zig zag quilt.

It finished all the cutting last week and with the help of the ruler, it only took a half hour or so in total, split into small chunks over a few days. I got really excited seeing all the colors lined up together — this is basically my favorite color palette! I’m a cool color gal all the way. I suppose you could mistake this for a boy quilt, but I think the purple and the turquoise makes it girly enough for my tastes.

Last night I finally started laying out the triangles to see what worked best. I started putting them in random order, but then decided to lay out a row that was roughly in color order from light to dark and from teal to blue to purple. I did a few more rows staggered somewhat and I like the way it’s heading! You can see above that rows 1 and 2 are staggered by only 2 spots, while the third row is offset a lot more. I’m not sure which way I prefer. Staggering by only two each row will end up creating some subtle diagonal “stripes”  and I’m not sure if I want that or not. So the next step is to lay out all 6 rows and then shift as needed until I’m happy!

Playing with the layout did have one consequence already though — I decided to ditch the light blue starry fabric. I just didn’t feel like it fit in with everything, although I can’t totally explain why. Perhaps it had just a little too much contrast? So there will only be 2 patterned fabrics in the finished product in the end.

Yet to be determined are what to use for the backing and for the binding. I’m completely torn between a solid color, subtle pattern, or some mix of the two for the backing. The binding will almost certainly be a solid in the middle of the spectrum — probably a medium purple or teal. And between choosing a backing and adding the binding, I’ll have to decide exactly how I want to quilt it — I’m thinking either along the seams of each triangle or offset just a bit inside, so it just depends on how visible I want the quilting to be.

Still, I can’t wait to start sewing this thing together this weekend!