The Helen Quilt Pattern with Leah Duncan's Yuma Collection
I have been a Leah Duncan fan for a long time. About 10 years ago, I made a quilt using her Meadow collection and even wrote a tutorial for it (see the quilt here and the tutorial here). So, when I saw her Yuma collection, I snatched it up without any plans for what I wanted to do with it, and I am so glad I had it on hand to make the Helen Quilt Pattern.
The Yuma collection didn’t quite have enough fabrics to complete the quilt, and since I only had a fat quarter bundle, I couldn’t double up on any of the fabrics. Fortunately, I noticed that her Furrow collection blended really well, so I picked a couple of those fat quarters to complement the Yuma fabrics.
I just adore the detail and colors in these fabrics and enjoyed working with them so much. To ensure the directional fabrics were all oriented correctly, I put together a little tutorial (see here). It was well worth the effort to show off the fabrics beautifully.
Choosing the Perfect Background and Backing Fabrics
The background fabric is Designer Essentials solid in Mist, one of my favorite off-white colors. It has almost a hint of pink, but it’s not pink. I have been working through a bolt of it for the last couple of years and have almost finished it off.
For the backing, I bought yardage of the Gold Poppy print, one of my favorite prints in the collection. The Cloud9 cotton prints have more weight than quilting cotton from most fabric manufacturers, and using these prints on both the quilt top and the backing gave the quilt a really satisfying weight. The binding is another favorite, Pure Solids in Magnetism.
Quilting Details
For the quilting, I did an organic (aka I didn’t mark or measure) serpentine stitch. I love the finished texture it gave the quilt.
Make Your Own Helen Quilt
If you want to make a quilt just like this one, you can still find Yuma in stock, and you can find the Helen Quilt Pattern in my shop. If you are new to Leah Duncan’s work, make sure to check her out! Her work is gorgeous.