New quilt top

After a break from sewing and quilting recently, I was back with full force in an effort to go through my stash. My goal was to make a quilt entirely out of existing fat quarters in my stash, and I was worried the fat quarters wouldn’t entirely go together since they weren’t super matchy.

I was surprised how well the multiple colors and patterns ended up working together. As the snow fell in January, it was nice to have such a fun, happy quilt to work on.

I have come to realize I’m not much of a pattern quilter. I would rather pull together a bunch of small amounts of fabric I like and come up with something.

Here’s how this came about: This quilt is made up of different strips. The long, skinny strips are made up of 8 4 inch X 9 inch strips sewn together. The thicker strips are made up of a huge collection of strips cut to 10 inches wide and a variety of different heights ranging from 1 inch to 10 inches. I kept sewing little strips together until they all ended up at about 65 inches long. I made 7 of the 4 inch wide strips and 6 of the 10 inch wide strips. Then, I made 2 strips of 4 inch X 9 inch strips and sewed 10 of them together to create the two end caps of the quilt, trimming to fit.

The finished top is about 75X75 inches, and made up of 20 different fat quarters (there are a few scraps remaining that will go into the back).

I can’t wait to have it quilted and have it cheering up the foot of our bed.

Other quilt examples

Yesterday I found some old photos I thought I had lost, of quilts I had made and given away. It was more exciting than I can even express.

So here it is, photographic evidence of two other quilts I have created:

I made this baby quilt for a stylish friend of mine in San Francisco, who so graciously spent months in Missouri leading up to Obama’s election. I didn’t want to use traditional baby fabric, so I chose colors that went with some of the furniture they had in their nursery. I hand-tied this quilt with thin, cream-colored satin ribbon and extra poofy batting to keep baby nice and warm. The pattern is here.

Baby quilt - Yellow Brick Road design

Closeup

And the last project I found pictures of – a wedding gift for one of my oldest and dearest friends. This again is a strip-based quilt, only this is made of 5X10 pieces with no staggered seams. I was feeling a bit more confident with my measuring and sewing skills by this point. 🙂 I also sewed a thin contrasting border of 2X12 inch pieces to add some more interest. The quilter I took this to actually chose the binding, and I just loved it.

🙂

Backing

Stitching closeup

Thanks to Matt for modeling. 🙂