A Rainbow of my Very Own

This finish is so special to me. I'm very excited it's done! I have posted tidbits about my daughter's hearing loss, but to understand this quilt, I have to tell a little story.

When I first started reading books with her I had a music stand set up with the book propped on it so I could sign with the book open. We had a pretty good rhythm down until she received her first cochlear implant. After that, she didn't want to sign books anymore. What I thought would be our signing part of the day became our speaking part of the day. It was wonderful to see how she responded to the stories, and she immediately identified her favorites, as all kids do.

One of the first books we read together was, "A Rainbow of my Own" by Dan Freeman. It's a lovely story about a little boy who goes out after a rainstorm to find a rainbow, but when he gets to where the rainbow should be, it's gone. He imagines what it would be like to have a rainbow to play with. While the little boy is playing with the rainbow, they decide to play hide-and-seek and the rainbow hides in a flower garden. At the end of the book, he finds a rainbow of his very own in his room.  It's so sweet, and my daughter loved it! She would have me read it again and again. You can tell by how tattered the book is that we've enjoyed it tremendously.

I was so inspired by this book and the love of verbal reading it encouraged in my daughter, I wanted to make a quilt about it. I had a couple of fat-quarter packs of hand-dyed fabric in a rainbow spectrum. I bought it years ago at a LQS that's known for having a little of everything. It was totally meant to be used in this project.

I got some green batik to use as the greenery surrounding the flowers, and offset the flowers themselves to make it look like they are swaying in a garden of flowers. The flowers are basically 4 snowballs, each with 1 yellow corner and 3 green corners to create the flower center and the leafy edges.

The flowers ended up creating a long, narrow quilt and I still had a ton of scraps left, so I decided to create the repeating rainbow bands down each side. It gave the quilt a nice width to balance the length a little more.

The backing is a batik I purchased at another LQS that recently closed. I was able to get it for a pretty good deal. I like that it has all sorts of colors on it, although I admit it's not my favorite print. I struggled with whether to actually use it, but in the end decided I was interested in the front, so it didn't really matter what was on the back. Now that it's completed, I think it looks pretty nice.

I modified a quilting template I had to create the flower look on each flower in the garden. Other than that, I kept it really simple with 1/4" offset lines down the borders. I didn't want to take away from the flowers; the whole point of the quilt.

Finally, I hand-stitched the binding down, which went surprisingly fast, and I added a label on it. I actually named this one and dedicated it to my daughter. It's a keeper.

I am linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts for Finished Friday. I feel like I've been able to really crank them out lately. I worry I might be coming to a screeching halt as we approach the holidays and the chaos that comes with them.  We'll see. Fingers crossed I can keep chugging away.