Blogger's Quilt Festival - Pineapple Two-Color Quilt

My entry in this fall's Blogger's Quilt Festival is my only two-color quilt, Rendezvous.

 

I am absolutely smitten with the fabric lines from French General.  I looked for a design that would make the most of the colors in this fat quarter pack from the Rouenneries Deux collection and settled on the pineapple block to combine the various shades of red with the neutrals.

 

The pineapple block is made in rounds, similar to the construction of the (much easier IMO) log cabin block.  I cut my fabric into 1.5 inch wide strips and used a special pineapple ruler to trim and square up the block after each round.  (You can read more about the ruler and how to use it in my post here.)

 

 

Working on five or six blocks at a time, the quilt gradually began to take shape on my design wall.  I reserved the darker toned neutrals for the blocks that would form the outer border of the quilt; in this way, what you see as the border was formed by color placement in piecing the blocks.

 

Here is a photo of part of the finished quilt, where you can see how the border turned out.

 

 

Rendezvous was quilted by a long arm quilter, Karen Thompson, using a traditional French motif, the fleur-de-lis.  You can see it more clearly in the second photo below, where the motif ran off the edge of the quilt into the surplus batting.  Of course, this was trimmed off to apply the binding.

 

 

For backing, I used a red-on-sand floral print from one of the French General fabric lines.

 

Here's the finished quilt again.  Rendezvous is 68" square (49 blocks, arranged 7 by 7), perfect for a throw quilt on the couch. 

 

 

I'm entering Rendezvous in the Two-Color Quilt category in Blogger's Quilt Festival.  Click over to Amy's blog to see lots more quilts in the biggest quilt show online!