"A" Is For Apple - The Granny Smith Edition

For the longest time I couldn't get my boys to eat very many apples. Somehow, it has usually been my husband that always put the apples in the shopping cart, and of course he picked his favorite... red. It wasn't until I started picking up a few apples for myself, that I realized that my boys, like me, prefer a sour and tart tasting apple... like the lip-puckering, Granny Smith!

You may remember a long time ago I shared my first apple quilt. I hadn't really made it with the intention of turning it into a pattern, but simply because a creative spark was lit, and I just had to get it out... and I have to say that I'm glad that inspiration hit me in this way. It was making this XXL apple that kind of got the ball rolling for some of my other XXL patterns.

But this Granny Smith was essentially started because I had to then remake the quilt in order to "test" and see if all my ducks were in a row. Because I had not intenailly made the first quilt for a pattern release, I hadn't made notes and changes like I usually would when I move to the writing process... I am usually tweakign and making little changes to a pattern as it's been made the first time around.

Since I had already quilted my first apple with reapeating shapes from the pieced side, I decided that I wanted to try something different for the quilting. I just love to use orange peels in my applique, and why not for quilting too? It might be a bit of a surprise to know that I actually quilted this with my walking foot. I have to admit that I am still not comfortable with free motion quilting. Too often I find myself almost feeling the need to apolgize about that. On one hand I want to push myself, but on the other hand, it can be nice to set up camp in your comfort zone. 

For the rest of the quilting, I stuck with straight lines, but in a slightly different pattern than the red apple. It's always fascinating when a quilt tells you when it's ready to change the direction of it's lines.

For this second version, I also decided that I wanted to do a two-leaf, second-stem version as an alternative layout option. Just like real apples - some like the red ones, and some like the green, it's a bit the same with the leaves. It's been really interesting for me to see that most of my pattern testers have picked the two-leaf version too!

A while back I was able to snap up several yards of Carolyn Friedlander's Ledger fabric. From the beginning of this quilt, I knew I wanted to use this for the backing and espeically the binding of this quilt.

I am finding myself more and more picking a subtle and hardly noticable fabric for the binding. My way of thinking is that I want the fabrics and focal point of the quilt to be the first part that you see, and the binding is the secondary discovery that you find when you look a little closer.

So are you ready to delve into a little juicy, XXL applique deliciousness yourself? My "A" Is For Apple pattern releases this Thurday, March 5th! Keep your eyes open for my second post this week!

Quilt: Pattern: "A" Is For Apple, self design
Started: August 2019
Fabrics: Basic Grey Grunge fabrics, Cotton & Steel, Kona cotton white
Finished quilt size: ca. 42" x 46" in. (ca. 106  x 116 cm)