Finally! Finally, I can share this quilt with you! I have had it finished since June and it has been on our bed all summer, making me happy every time I walked past our door, but I haven't been able to show it to you. But now I can! This is Love Birds, and it is in the latest issue of Make Modern magazine (affiliate link), which was just released today. From now until December 1st, you can get this issue for $6 AUD with the coupon code issue13friends. Believe it or not, this quilt is based on this block, which EQ7 calls 'Eccentric Star 3'. When I put the block into a quilt layout in EQ7, I decided to rotate every other block, which made me think of two birds kissing where the v's meet. The more I looked at the design, the more I liked it. I've been wanting to make a quilt for our bed for years, but I could never settle on a pattern I liked enough until I saw this. As you can see from the block, the whole 84" x 96" quilt is made entirely of squares and HSTs. Lots of HSTs. I found they came together faster than I expected, though, probably because I made them in batches, sewing, trimming and pressing each batch before starting again with a new batch. It felt like I was making progress faster that way than if I had tried to sew all of them at once, then trim them all, etc. I knew I didn't want to quilt this one densely, both because of the time that would take and because I wanted the quilt to stay nice and soft since it would be going on our bed. I chose this looping spiral design after seeing it on IG and I love how it looks. I tried really, really hard to quilt the looping spirals bigger than my normal small quilting. It was tough, as all those empty spaces seemed to be calling out, "Quilt me, quilt me!" but I resisted and the quilt is lovely soft and drapes so nicely. I did find it challenging to quilt on a larger scale though, and for the first time I found myself wishing for a machine with a larger throat space. It wasn't because I wanted to fit more quilt in there, but because I wanted more room to move my hands as I tried making those big circles! I really wanted to get good pictures of this quilt, so I took it on a little hike shortly before sunset, to take advantage of golden hour. It actually took two nights, since the first night I couldn't find a setting I liked. The second night went better, mostly thanks to my friend Michelle who came along that night and had some great ideas. And we found this stump, which makes a great spot for a quilt roll picture, don't you think? There were a couple of tiny iceburgs in the area when we were taking the pictures (early July). And this is how it looked just after the sun disappeared behind the hills. Here's one more picture, just because I love it! That feels better! Secret sewing is fun, but letting the secrets out is even more fun :) *This post contains an affiliate link, which means if you click the link and make a purchase I may receive a small commission. This does not affect the price you pay.