IKEA and I think alike.

I have been working on a quilt for my oldest daughter, 
Claire and her husband Conrad. 

Claire saw a quilt on line that caught her eye. I am sorry that I don't have any 
information on who to credit this great quilt to. 

I drew up a preliminary plan on Illustrator which I have tried to place here, but Google + shuts down every time I get near it with a technical drawing in any of their accepted formats ! You will just have to imagine it. 

During my last visit with Claire we headed off to Elaine's Quilt Shop. http://www.elainesquiltblock.com/shop-online.htm. We had a great time.  A great time means spending 2 1/2 hours foraging through tons of fabulous fabric. I am sure the employees were sick of the mess we made. We used their upstairs area as a design studio to lay out all of Claire's color options. She chose this fabric for her inspiration.

I completely loved the combination of the greens and blues with an occasional pink, so we searched high an low and found more fabric that complimented her inspiration fabric from Elaine's and Hawthorn Threads. 

Then Claire found this gem on line at Hawthornthreads.com for her backing fabric. I really liked that she found something with green & navy in it to continue the color theme. 

I picked out the background fabric that the big circle would be placed on. I decided to use a Kaufman Wide Screen Fat Back in Silver. I really liked not having any seams on the front. I thought it would help carry across the minimalist concept of having just a big circle on the front of the quilt. Here's what's left from the Fat Back. 

I bought a 10 degree wedge ruler and modified it to work with the plan I drew up in Illustrator. 

Here's a picture with the wedges sewn together and pinned on the Fat Back. I sewed the big circle on with mono filament thread. 

It's so big, I've been calling it the gray whale.

When I searched on line for quilting pantographs that would be suitable for this quilt I stumbled across one that caught my eye. It's called Abacus. 

I thought this was a great match. The small circles mimicked the larger circle on the front of the quilt. I liked the idea of using a minimalist quilting pantograph since the quilt design is so simple to begin with. 

Now enters IKEA. While I was shopping there this week I stumbled across the abacus design EVERYWHERE!!!

I just had to buy the gift wrap.

Here's our dog Charlie hanging out on our new door mat with the abacus design on it also. 

I think IKEA and I are blood sisters. It was really fun to see the quilting design I just chose for Claire and Conrad's quilt all over the store. 

Now all I have to do is to bind the world's largest quilt. I designed the quilt to generously fit a queen size bed. 

I think I'm in love with the abacus design even more after Lisa Johnson spent 6 hours quilting it. She did a wonderful job with the long arm at Quilter's Cocoon.  Lisa is a saint. Not sure how to go about nominating her to the Vatican for Sainthood:)