Earlier this year I made a Disappearing 9 Patch lap quilt that I called Spring Exuberance and absolutely fell in love with the technique.  I could not believe that I could create something so simple and  make it look so intricate just by being brave enough to slice a block in quarters.  After completing the first one I was looking for an excuse to make another and when summer finally arrived I decided we needed a new table topper for the garden table.

For Spring Exuberance I used nine different fat quarters in bright colours and once they were sliced rearranged them to make a square.  For this version I chose a much more restful palette and only used six fat quarters.  The original size of the block remains the same 3 x 3 6.5" squares sewn together to make an 18.5" block that is then cut in half through the middle both top to bottom and side to side.  The cut blocks were then rotated and rearranged until I found a layout that I liked and then pieced together to create a long narrow table topper.

Once the table topper was pieced I had to decide how to quilt it.  Spring Exuberance was straight line quilted using the walking foot and I considered doing the same for this one but I enjoyed the process of digital quilting so much on my samples I decided to see if I could find digitised quilting patterns that would enhance this quilt.

I ended up downloading and test stitched two main patterns, one of which looked like free-machine stippling and one that looked like a flower and fitted perfectly inside the largest of the squares on the quilt.

I decided to go for the flower pattern and in keeping with the low impact style of the quilt I used a pale grey quilting thread so that all the quilting blended into the background.  I then had to find complimentary paterns for the rectangles and the small squares.  I ended up with these

The finished effect on the front of the quilt is

and on the back of the quilt it is much more pronounced

Now I just need to add a binding and wait for another sunny day to use my new quilt.