Back in October 2019, my husband and I travelled to the Netherlands for a vacation. We did the usual touristy things and I took him to the city of den Bosch, where my family is from. And, of course, I found a quilt shop in Amsterdam, Den Haan & Wagenmakers.

Once we returned home, I saw on their online shop that they had a lovely pattern called Little Amsterdam. I decided I just had to have it, so I sent away for the pattern and a few traditional fabrics to go with it.

Little Amsterdam Arrives!

Once it arrived, it was like opening a gift at Christmas. There wasn’t enough fabric for the whole quilt, but the pieces were a great start and helped me choose other blues from my own stash.

The pattern had a lot of paper piecing and precision piecing with tiny bits, something I’m not overly fond of, so I decided to do a little bit at a time, so I didn’t get overwhelmed and never finish it.

That approach worked and over the course of a year, the quilt started to take shape.

And then, all of a sudden, it seemed, it was finished! Now to quilt it.

Now, The Quilting

The pattern suggested a loose floral edge-to-edge type quilting, but that didn’t seem right to me. It wouldn’t bring the buildings out, there was no pop to it. So I waited. Inspiration would come eventually. And it did, just as I took delivery of my new Q’Nique 21Pro. I was upgrading my 15Pro.

That extra several inches of quilting space made for more possibilities and now I knew how I wanted to quilt this piece.

I did mostly ruler work in the houses. I wanted each house to be unique, so I varied how I quilted in the windows and doors, as well as the roofs and eaves. This is a few of them.

To focus on the bridge, I outlined brick by brick.

Then there was the background to finish. I decided a dense quilting with lots of flow was just what this quilt needed. (That wasn’t the actual quilting process, but the decision process worked that way.)

I was right. The dense, flowy quilting made my quilt pop. It looks wonderful.

I still have to bind it and then figure out where the heck to hang it. The quilt is about 72 inches square but my wall space is pretty well claimed. I may have to swap out one of the quilts, maybe my butterfly one, for a while.