Tipus & Treetops

Several years ago I sewed up a kit from orange and gray fabrics, artwork of Lotta Jansdotter, a US-based Swedish designer. I really liked the fresh modern look of Windham's Bella Collection. I almost bought a second kit from the Fat Quarter Shop in its other colorway, teal and gray, but I felt silly and guilty to do so. Instead I bought some fabrics from the Bella collection in the teal options, reasoning I could alway buy supplementary grays at a later time. Of course I bought more teal fabric than necessary, also from the Bella collection, just to be sure. 

The four fabrics had identifying numbers but the corresponding names I could find only on the selvages. All dated from a 2012 copyright. Lind is for the trees perhaps, maybe Linden trees. Ruta is Swedish for box. Tipu is a word for a little chick still with yellow down. I have no idea what cal means; it looks like leaves and balls typical of a Linden tree, but I think I like to imagine them as stylized tulips.

The kit came with a hard copy of the free pattern Bella's Bird from Windham fabrics. I made it up in 2016 and "very creatively" titled it Orange and Grey (8/10/2016 post) misspelling grey. (I have since learned that grey with an "e" is the English version and gray with an "a" is the American spelling.) The teal fabrics sat in my stash for years. Here is the pattern on which I based the second quilt, substituting gray fabrics and enlarging the size slightly. Determined that my second Jansdotter quilt would have a more interesting name, I am considering naming it Tipus & Treetops, though I might squeeze Tulips, somewhere in the title, also, even though tulips are a stretch of my imagination.

The blocks are simple with a design interest interjected by the fact that the centers are either a wide landscape orientation or tall portrait orientation and the center rectangles undulate up and down as well as alternating orientation. Piecing is easy, four rectangles in sequence B, C, D, E surround the center A. Fussy cutting the pieces to be right side up and center some of the larger graphics was a challenge. 

At the October/November 2022 Houston Quilt Festival I shopped for grays. These are the five selections I chose to pair with the graphic teal prints. I could not pass up the sunflowers (top left) and woodland creatures (top right), both of which came from local shops in San Antonio and not the show. I included stripes, circles, and triangles in my geometric selections. The following images show some block fabric combinations and fussy cutting.

The pattern called for twenty blocks but I had so much fun I wanted to continue; I had enough fabric to do so. Should I add a row on the top or bottom or add another column to the right? I asked my husband and he said a row so it would be more the dimensions for on a bed. My daughter agreed with her dad that a rectangular quilt is more useful than a square one. I responded, "If you want useful, buy a blanket. This is art!" I am in the process of adding a column and the quilt will be square. That way I can also put in more blocks with striped perimeter since I want more stripes. The upper right and lower left corners will remain one of a kind odd ball blocks. Stay tuned for a progress report and the creation of a backing.

I am not so sure if not buying the kit in the teal colorway was a wise decision, at least not financially. Even though I'd brought a fabric sample with me to match grays, I bought several gray options that I ultimately rejected. From left to right: too plain, too plain, too beige, too purplish, too silver, too silver, too silver, too similar to teal prints with balls. I truly loved the fourth one with the kite tails but it was amazing how off the gray was, almost a brown-puce-purple. Oh well, I had fun shopping and maybe I can use these to piece a backing. Besides, gray is a neutral I can use anywhere. Whoops! Oh, wait. Maybe not!