Chubby Churn Dash

I'm not sure where the rest of February went but it seems like I blinked and the entire month was gone.  However, I didn't let it sneak past me without finishing Pat Sloan's Aurifil Designer of the month challenge.  February's mini quilt was designed by Jonanna Figueroa at Fig Tree & Co. and is called Chubby Churn Dash.  With a name like that how could you not love it??  With Valentines Day in the air and that word "chubby" in the title I couldn't help but think of cute little cherubs and soft pinks and blues. With my goal being to whittle down my stash of fabrics my mind instantly went to some charm packs of Papillon by 3 Sisters that I have been saving FOREVER.  But of course as soon as I pulled out my totes of charm packs other fabrics caught my eye.

I almost changed my mind and grabbed the bright batiks in the middle.  But it was the month of love and my original plan was to have softer colors in the quilt so I kissed the other two charm packs good-bye-for-now and opened up the beautiful blues and pinks of Papillon.  

I had two different thoughts on the color for the sashing.  Even though there is no yellow in this color line, I thought a pretty soft yellow might add something or I had some yardage of a light blue from the Papillon line.  

In the end I decided on the light blue.  Something about the yellow didn't flow for me.  Then it was time to get this thing sewn together.  I was itching to quilt something!

Next came possible thread choices.  My first thought was to quilt the center square with a matching thread color, but I decided to stick with the light pink and gray Aurifil threads and keep it simple.  The only thing left to do was decide on the quilting.  

 I auditioned 3 different possibilities for my blocks.  One of my favorite things to do is very dense quilting around something to really make it pop off the quilt.  I really wanted the churn dash blocks to stick out so that is the quilting option that won.

So after a weekend spent relaxing with Netflix I finally finished the mini quilt.  Not a bad way to end the month at all.  Now it's time to catch up on all of the new BOM for March that should be out.