After talking with a friend, she was interested in my previous black and orange quilt but it was too small. It’s a lap throw and she wanted something bed size for her daughter and son-in-law who both recently graduated from Oregon State University. The school’s colors are orange and black so I set out to make another quilt as a surprise for them.

I saw a quilt on Pinterest that I liked and found out it was Embers from Mary Fons’ book Make & Love Quilts. All of the quilts in the book are bed size with the smallest being a queen. I love the scrappy fabrics Mary Fons used in her quilt and wanted to go scrappy as well. I decided on orange snowball centers with a black on cream text fabric as the snowball corners and black sashing.  The quilt in the book is stunning and I think this one will be equally so.

I dove into my local quilt shop’s scrap bin looking for all matter of oranges. I also asked my mom to pull from her scrappy stash. I knew she’d have plenty of a variety of oranges because her favorite colors are fall colors. Here’s what I came up with…

So, you can see the colors run from dark orange to very bright orange and the mixture will help make the quilt more dimensional and interesting to look at.

I started sewing the snowball corners on this quilt at retreat back in September and have continued here and there but I’m still not finished with it yet. Here’s my chain piecing at retreat in terrible lighting. This is a small portion of the blocks. There’s over 300 orange squares and I forgot how many little background squares that make up the corners of the snowballs.

I’m putting this one on my list to finish next year.

Happy Quilting!

Camille