Shimmering Blue Mermaid Quilt

When Hayley at Spring Daisy Stitchery asked me to test her beginner-level hexagon pattern, the Gondor pattern, I gave it some thought. I had a lot on my plate, I am not a beginner, and I had never worked with one of her patterns before.

But some things were working in her favor. Number one, the name. She named her quilt pattern after a fictional kingdom in Lord of the Rings. Yes, please! Number two, my uncle has been requesting a blue quilt for his house for literal years now. I had pulled a beautiful and varied blue prints from my original Cotton + Steel fabric collections, and a stack of coordinating solids, but I didn’t know what to do with them. My uncle is a traditional guy. He favors traditional colors and styles, and I am a decidedly modern quilter. Enter the Gondor!

I had a spark of an idea, but I am relieved that it came out even better than I had imagined it. It looks like shimmering fish scales. I achieved the shimmer by placing my blue print fabrics from light to dark down the quilt in the hexagon shapes, and placing the blue solid fabrics from dark to light down the quilt in the triangle shapes. So reverse blue ombres work together to give a lot of movement to this basic traditional set of quilt shapes.

I had intentions of taking photos of this quilt with a mural in the background, but I happened to be meeting a friend for lunch in Oceanside and walked through the Oceanside City Hall complex. Wow! It’s straight out of the Little Mermaid! King Triton’s palace, a mosaic fountain, and there’s even a little grotto near the entrance to the city library.

I am so glad I undertook to test this pattern for Hayley, and I hope I gave her some useful feedback so others can create their very own Gondor quilt.

Since my fabrics and placement were ever so modern, I stuck to a more traditional style of free motion quilting design, covering this bed quilt in swirly feathery teardrops, to appeal to the aesthetic of its intended recipient, my very patient uncle.

This quilt was custom made for my uncle, but if you would like a similar quilt, consider a custom order.