Hanover Country Life Quilt and Baby Quilt

Hanover Country Life

Hanover Country Life Quilt, 75" x 77"

I spend a month each summer in Maine and I try to have a piecing project for the trip. I do as much prep ahead of time as I can so that I can spend the month sewing. This is the project that I started in Maine in 2024. I cut out all of the fabrics ahead of time and got the blocks pieced on vacation. I worked on it off and on after vacation and finished it in January 2025. This quilt was made for the Montpelier Center for the Arts and Education to use as their 2025 raffle quilt.

​The pattern is Fab Farm by Elizabeth Hartman.
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The fabrics are all hand dyed and it was fun pulling different textured fabrics for the animals. The quilt is pieced in quadrants with 9 blocks in each. You can click on these to see them close up.

Here are each of the block groups together so you can see the fabric choices for each animal. The bees are the only blocks that were made identical.

The back is a gradient pattern that I used to sell called Frolic. It's quilted with a pantograph called Macrame.
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Baby Quilt

After the Hanover Country Life quilt was finished I learned that we were having a new baby in the family. I had plenty of leftover fabric to make a baby quilt for the new baby.

When I make family quilts, especially for babies, I like to use some elements from my Great Grandmother's stash of unfinished blocks. All I have left to work with are these 8-point stars and they are crazy wonky and the centers are very bulky. These stars would have been made in the 1960's. They aren't usable the way they are. I decided to take a couple of stars apart and re-cut new diamonds so they would all be the same shape. I think the diamond chain shows off the fabrics much better than the stars and gives it a little more modern look. I printed the label with a diamond frame so that I could piece it into the chain. Adding a separate label off in the corner would have disturbed the design of the back. I feel like it's a legitimate two-sided quilt.

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It's quilted with a pantograph called Happy Times. This is a good one for baby quilts to keep them soft and cuddly.