Because I’ve been busy making a quilt for my bed! This is by far the largest quilt I’ve ever made, the first time I’ve pieced diamonds, and the first time I’ve done set-in seams.
Some background information – I decided around the time of the Wisconsin Quilt Expo that I wanted to finally make a quilt for my bed. I used the quilt show for some research and determined that I wanted a modern medallion-style quilt with a white background and bright colors. I looked through a stack of quilt pattern books at least a foot thick, and when I saw this pattern I immediately knew it was the one. Fabric purchasing and piecing started in October. I’m hoping to finish while it’s still bed quilt season here. I’m currently working on machine-quilting, but may need to put that on hold to work on some time-sensitive projects.
Some details:
Pattern: Over the Border by Kathy Doughty from Material Obsession 2. Here’s the quilt from the book. Note to anybody making this quilt: the materials list in the pattern doesn’t include the outer border fabric.
Fabric: Various prints from my LQS, stash, and an online store. Backing is an Amy Butler print from another LQS. Pet peeve: the horizontal pattern repeat on that backing fabric is such that it’s not possible to match the pattern across widths without wasting a ton of fabric, so I had to accept that it’ll just look like there’s about 1/2″ of pattern missing at each seam along the backing. So close to being able to align, and just not there.
Batting: Quilter’s Dream Wool Batting, bought online from a quilt store in Iowa. If any Crackpots want to try this out, I’ve got some 2-foot-wide pieces that I can send you – the queen sized batting was a few inches too narrow, so I bought the king sized batting and cut 2 feet off each dimension. I really like this batting – it’s wool, machine washable, isn’t supposed to shrink, and even though it’s somewhat lofty it machine-quilts well even on my machine with a fairly small space to the right of the needle. It has a maximum quilting distance of 8 inches, the largest I’ve seen for a wool batting. Always a plus for those of us who don’t have ideal sewing machines (or skills!) for machine-quilting of large objects.
You’ll note by comparing my quilt with the original that I rejiggered the colors (which I’m sure surprises nobody), and my outer border is striped (with bonus mitered corners!) instead of the inner border, but that’s because the fabric I loved for the inner border happened not to be stripey rather than any real design decision.
And, at Nancy’s request, a not-so-great picture of a mitered corner. Wavy stripes mean making them match exactly at the corner is impossible, but I think I did pretty well, and it only took a little futzing to make the 4th corner match.
