I’m pleased to present my version of the Boomerang quilt: Kinniken’s Dragon. This one is headed out to my brother on the east coast.

The minute I saw the Boomerang pattern by Jaybird Quilts, I knew I wanted to make it. I also loved the way Angela Walters quilted the one on the cover of the pattern, and I couldn’t wait to try something similar myself.

Of course, it didn’t quite turn out the way I envisioned it at first. To start with, I chose ombre and patterned fabrics, not solids.

I picked coordinating colors and planned for each diamond block to include both the ombre and the mottled fabric. The pattern was really easy to work with. I did pick up the Super Sidekick ruler, and I highly recommend it. It made it a snap to make all the triangle patches.

I loved the way the blocks turned out, but when I arranged them on my design wall the way the pattern suggested, I was disappointed in the result:

This layout looks fantastic with blocks made from solid, coordinating fabrics. With the ones I chose, it just looked messy and chaotic.

I left it there for a couple of days. Every now and then I’d stand in front of it, seeking inspiration. Finally, I wondered what it would look like if I (gasp) turned one of the blocks the other way:

I’m not kidding, y’all, it took me three days to think of this. Even then I wasn’t completely sold, because I knew it would make it harder to quilt it the way Angela quilted hers. But I left it like that for another couple of days.

Then I thought, “Hmm, what if I grouped the colors together into patches?”

This is when I finally realized I was going to have a quilt I loved at the end of this process. The shimmery texture reminded me of dragon or fish scales, and I was listening to Lord Valentine’s Castle while making this quilt, and its name suddenly came to me. (For those readers who aren’t avid sci-fi/fantasy fans, Kinniken’s Dragon is the name of a gigantic sea creature from that series, a water-king, part whale and part dragon. Well, not his real name. Just what people call him.)

I still had a ways to go before I got the blocks just the way I wanted them. Here’s a gallery of the progress shots. Some of the changes are quite subtle.

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And here is the final arrangement with the setting blocks added along the edges, sewn together into the finished quilt top:

I chose a wide newspaper-print fabric for the back and a gorgeous stripey binding that I promptly fell in love with.

It took me a while to decide how to quilt it. I wanted to match the thread colors to the top so that they would blend in, and I was mostly successful. But it meant swapping thread several times. I quilted the straight lines first to stabilize the quilt. Well, also because I can’t do free-motion work with my ruler foot without the thread breaking, but that’s a topic for another time. Then I filled in with the feathers and the wishbones.

I’m so pleased with the final result. Now to pack it up and ship it east!