Quilt No.1 Making

I've had to change the colours
slightly, so you can see the
pattern, as it's a light jade on cream.

One of Tom's oldest friends decided to get married to a pretty fab girl and I had the desire to make a quilt, after all of the time at the Haberdashery last year, I couldn't resist...so I started thinking that making one as a present couldn't be too hard...Yes, these are the same two who's wedding I helped decorate.

The thing about making a quilt is that it's a very personal thing. It doesn't just keep you warm, you can also dress your home, so you need to ensure it's in keeping with how the people you're giving it too, might dress their home. Or maybe I'm thinking too much?!

These two particular people have a Classic, Country, Parisian, Sleepy City Suburbs style. The girl is vintage and calm colours, the guy is good suits and shiny shoes.

My initial lay out
for the quilt

Luckily, the haberdashery I used to help at, Beyond Fabrics, had a nice selection of five inch square packs, one that had maps of Paris on them. Additional to these, were various pretty flowery squares.

There are only 40 squares in a pack, at approx. £15, bearing in mind of the salvage, that only covers 2.5ft by 2.5ft, roughly. Which won't make a single quilt of 6ft by 4ft.

Luckily I had various flowery patterns in similar colours, so I cut additional squares up and started to lay them out in a satisfactory pattern, where none of them seemed to clash.

I started to sew my 4 squares into square formations and realised, I was going to need loads more material, bloody hell, it's gonna cost a fortune! I head back to Beyond Fabrics and found some fantastic new materials with little swirls on them...perfect!

So I started to make borders, 1 inch wide. They have great appeal and look fantastic, but, they are a bitch to cut, sew, press and sew! I also made 3 inch wide borders to go in between the squares. I would suggest doing bigger squares, but I had an experience, back in the earlier days of my sewing career, where I tried to make a double quilt with big 7 inch squares...huge mistake!!!

I then needed to extend it length ways and found some neutral materials in my box, to add in. This is when I made a huge mistake, I mismatched two materials, then added a strip of plain either side, it looked shit! Cue lots of unpicking...the joys of sewing!

I set about cutting and sewing to break them all up and added my strips to the strip of squares and borders.

It's been suggested that I should have made a plan to begin with, or have used a pattern, but it's not how I fly. Yes it might have made life easier, but it wouldn't have been so much fun! If you've a logical brain, get an idea of what you'd like it to look like and set about it...I wanted squares, the borders were a last minute requirement that set it off nicely.

My lazy quilting...

I found the cutting of the final borders of the quilt and the sewing of those borders really tedious. It's up there with sewing the quilt top, wadding and backing together, or the binding...both dull as! The most exciting part is sewing the quilt top, it's a lot of fun seeing it come together, although I need to improve my lining up of the squares, etc.

Also, I bailed on actual quilting, lazy of me, I know. I did little square stitches in the middle of the squares and left tassles on the reversed side. 

The finished article!

I will try harder in the future on the actual quilting part, as I'm soon to embark on another quilt. This time it's brightly coloured with lots and lots of squares, I'm still collecting the material for the quilt top, I'm worried that I'm loosing my mind, as I'm seeing every item of my wardrobe as potential material. 

Here is a little taster of the next quilt...