Origami Oasis – Grassland Quilt

I created this quilt for my son who is a true colour lover. It suits his personality perfectly, as he is vivacious and fun-loving and loves imagining he is a wild animal (usually a lion), roaming the savannah that is our home, on a fairly regular basis.

My intention was to show off some of the larger scale prints in Origami Oasis and to capture the feel of colour moving across space. I used all the prints from the Grassland group, as well as Spot and Fold, both in Starfruit, from the Flower Fields group. To let all that colour have a chance to breathe a bit, the light & lovely Floret breaks things up. The binding is Crossing Paths in lime because I love the colour and because green was about the only colour I allowed to meander throughout the quilt top in a big way. And since I love making binding that has little variations throughout, I randomly interspersed tiny hits of other bold prints I had used in the top.

The juicy orangey-reds.

And the cool blues.

I think a quilt back is just another opportunity to be creative, so I centred the Oasis Border print in a field of Floret, much like a window into another world, added a rainbow band to tie in the fabrics used in the front and tried my hand at paper piecing for the first time in the addition of his sweet name. In all honesty, I need to find a better tutorial on paper piecing than the one I was working from… I mentally thanked Greg and myself many times for choosing a three-letter name for our boy while I reached for the seam ripper for the umpteenth time.

You can download full instructions for the free quilt top pattern here on the Michael Miller website. Enjoy!