Every quilt has a theme. Whether it is done with the color, or the quilting pattern or a print in the fabric, every quilt has a vibe that appeals to one person or another. For whatever reason, it is very common and very easy to make a feminine or girly quilt. Pinks, flowers, hearts, etc. are a dime a dozen at your local quilt shop. What do you do when you are looking to make a quilt for a teenage boy, or a young man or woman who simply doesn’t buy into the sweet feminine vibe? The following quilts are all gender neutral or more masculine in their appeal. Sometimes it is more than just fabric choice that can make a difference.

This is Angela’s baseball quilt for a nephew. She put Shannon Cuddle Dimple fabric in a midnight blue color on the back to make it super cuddly. The fabric she chose says it all. Baseballs, bats, and the great squares she used in the middle and the top edge are amazing. I like the pieced square blocks as well. They call to mind baseball diamonds.

She chose the orange peel design board to finish it up. The overlapped round motif almost look like baseballs repeated across the quilt. Definitely a great choice for a baseball quilt. What a lucky kid!

Karen took our certification class with this cute little piece. It is made entirely of batik scraps from other projects. She finished it with the Turbulence pantograph which I feel adds a nice flair to the straight edges of you design. Karen may have been new to our studio, but she has been quilting with longarms for sometime before that day. She new exactly what to do and did a great job.

This is Cindy and this was her first quilt with us as well. The matching red and black fabric set apart with solid black is so striking. The pattern also looks so much more complicated than it really is. Both colors of blocks are cut to the same rectangular size and receive the same black border on the long sides only making them square. The colors and orientation of the blocks is then alternated to keep black between all the blocks and resulting in a basket weave effect that is so simple and so beautiful. She quilted it with our Airborne pantograph which adds some flowy movement across the top of the quilt. She also chose to use white or grey thread which disappears in the colored blocks and speaks boldly on the black. I think it looks amazing. Kathleen brought in two quilts to complete the day she came in. We have a 2 hour minimum rental policy, so if your quilt is small, it’s a good idea to bring in two. This first one is a wall hanging. The top was all paper pieced in the greens, grays, and blacks. I love the ombre she managed with the greens and grays, spectacular fabric choices. She finished it with a spiral design board. Getting those perfectly round circles is difficult, so a design board that can keep you on the path with the stylus in a grooved board really helps. I think the circles really adds to the mesmerizing nature of the quilt top she created.

This quilt top was finished for her daughter’s second child due in just a month. When making baby blankets for children still to arrive, it’s even more important to keep the theme as neutral as possible, so it can work for either gender when he or she is born. This quilt top is much simpler than the first, but just as mesmerizing. Each strip is pieced with different lengths of colored batik fabrics. I can imagine you could complete this with a jelly roll. Then each strip is separated with a background fabric, in this case white. She also finished it with the same spiral design board, but now instead of hypnotic swirls, I see ripples in a pond with all those cool water colors. It’s amazing how the look of things change depending the colors around them.

This is Vickie’s donation for a raffle. It is of course all about the University of Kentucky with lots of UK themed fabrics. The pattern is a straight split rail fence. She sewed this herself at home, but actually rented a AccuQuilt Fabric Die Cutter to cut out all of those strips. Using a die cutter can get the work done faster and more accurately than just a rotary cutter. She finished it with our orange peel design board, which gives you lots of perfect overlapping circles that look a little like basketballs or baseballs. What a perfect quilt for a sports enthusiast. So you can see, it’s not just about using blues, blacks, or browns. Masculine quilts can focus on circles or straight lines, can have a flair for the dramatic, or just a simple line of color. There are lots of ways to make quilts that will appeal to everyone.