National Park Queen Quilt

You’ve seen those gorgeous Riley Blake National Park vintage poster fabric panels?

Riley Blake Rocky Mtn Nat'l Park panel, showing Long's Peak in the background with yellow aspen trees in front of it, and a big elk in the foreground.

Well, I wanted to make a queen quilt as a present for some dear friends. They love the Parks and we’d all been to Rocky Mountain National Park, and I’m from CO, AND we had recently traveled together to see the fall foliage, so the Rocky Mountain National Park panel seemed like a great symbolic piece to center the quilt design around – representing many fond memories.
I really struggled to find a design for the whole quilt that would center the panel but also make it merely a part of the whole. I loved the idea of continuing the panel’s design into the quilt whole, making it look like a sharpened snapshot of the park, set off in a frame, while the wild park continues around it.

The panel from the first picture set in a quilt, where the image continues to the edges - blue sky, at the top, then a row of mountains, a row of dark green pine trees, a row of yellow aspen trees, grassy meadow, a small deer in the background and large elk in the foreground, bottom portion is large blocks of various brown and green fabrics in irregular wedges layered on each other.

I put the batting with the top, quilting as I went, then did another layer of ‘outline’ quilting when I added the backing. This provided lots of structure and stability without making the backing too cluttered (you can see from the top thread density just how messy it would look otherwise!). The quilting is all done with glossy embroidery threads, ombre and solid. The fabric is not fused down, simply placed and stitched. It is raw-edge applique because nature does not have neat, finished edges, it’s raw and rough, so this is too (although everything is quite tightly trimmed and fairly tidy 😜).

Detail view of mountains, pine trees, and aspen trees, with fabric applique and lavish detail stitching.

I backed it with a mottled dark red flannel for warmth, and did the backing and binding all in one (an incredibly easy method I will be using again!!). The dark space sky portion at the top was so dark you wouldn’t really see the quilting necessarily, so I decided it was perfect to insert some personal jokes – so the quilting there is in the shape of a satellite, a rocket with an alien inside tethered to a space-walking man, a planet, and similar space-y things.

Picture of mottled red flannel back with stitched outline of rocket, with flames out the bottom, and a small round window with a little round antennaed alien head showing.
The back view of the antennaed alien in the rocket 🤣

It took about 4 months of hard work, SO. BLEEPING. MANY. spools of thread, lots of gorgeous fabrics, about 5 machine needles, some blood, much cursing, MUCH sighing over it and falling in love with it, and I am SO thrilled with the results! This is one of the most beautiful ways to “Give Warmth” – not only does this gift literally keep them warm, but everytime they see it they will tangibly feel my love.
It looks absolutely amazing in their bedroom and totally “at home”!!

Shows the full quilt draped on a bed.

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