Orange Peel Quilts have exceptional appeal.  Something about these quilts  is timeless and so beautiful, romantic and antiquey.  There is nothing not to like about Orange Peel.  Maybe it is the curved shape and the way that it plays out when the shapes come together.  Maybe it’s to do with nature and fruit.  And then….combine it with beautiful fabrics… All I can say is I wanted to make one!  So begins the journey.

Getting down to practicalities.  Orange peel quilts begin as a great hand worked project.  A great travel project.  That’s how mine began some years ago now.  I wanted something that I could take with me to work on when I’m away from home.

Each block has one peel on it so it’s a very manageable little appliqué project.   Four sewn together can make the quilt block.

Eventually when enough are sewn together it will make the quilt.

I have made this quilt with 72 orange peel appliqués and this equals 16 blocks.

My dilemma came when thinking about how to finish this quilt.  All the Orange Peel Quilts I saw on-line seemed a bit “unfinished”. By that I mean that when I came to the border of one of theses quilts it gets a bit tricky.  How to finish this quilt with a border style which is complementary but does not upstage the orange peels.  I decided to make more than one border.  The first is a plain one with circles appliqued on it with a peel as the cornerstones.

Then because I like my quilts scrappy, I decided to make a colour wash border with charm squares around it and then followed with a taupe border to make the colours jump out.

This quilt is almost entirely hand pieced and so it seemed necessary to hand quilt it too.

Ive quilted this quilt freehand,  Its a lovely winter project to hand quilt.