This is the quilt that I made for my sofa, to be shared with the cat and the dog! I love modern quilts with lots of white, but for this purpose it would not have been very practical, I decided to go for this fabric to make a sort of 'traditional' looking quilt. I wanted fabric that was mostly blue, green and beige with a little red. I saw this Moda range, Nostalgia by April Cornell on sale at Jo Jo's Gift Shoppe so decided to go for it. The dark green fabric, used for the stars and binding is Little Lulu Flowers/Green background by Maywood Studio for EE Schenck also bought online from the same shop. It is the first time that I have bought from them, and the service, shipping and price were all good.
At first, I wasn't sure about the green fabric for the stars, it didn't clash with the other greens, but when I was sewing the star points, I really wasn't that thrilled, I nearly stopped, unpicked and started looking for different fabric. But, when I made up the first row of stars, I loved it - phew! I didn't want to use a solid, I wanted the stars to be a bit more hidden, and I didn't want the quilting to show up too much.
The pattern, Hidden Stars, is from "Layer Cake, Jelly Roll and Charm Quilts" by Pam and Nicky Lintott, a book I got for Christmas, along with the fabric for this quilt, (well the money to buy them anyway :-)) I really like this book, there are seventeen quilt designs, each made up and fully photographed in two very different colourways. It is helpful for me, as I am finding it easier to visualise the amount of fabric needed for different sized quilts. The patterns can easily be made bigger or smaller by making more blocks, of course. Out of the 17 designs, I am keen to make about 15 of them!
The finished size of this quilt is 49"x61"/125cm x 155cm, using one layer cake, plus 1m fabric for the stars and under 1/2m for the binding.
The backing fabric was cut from a new duvet set purchased locally in the sales, 100% soft 'eco' cotton, reduced from €20 to €7! Great! This used most of one side of the single duvet cover.
I liked the Green Dream wadding that I used for Mum's quilt, made from recycled plastic bottles, so decided to get more of the same for this quilt. Unfortunately, when I went to buy it from Cotton Patch, and after checking it wasn't a mistake, I fount that they had increased the postage to £37 for one packet of wadding!! The Cotton Patch rep said it was because it was bulky!! So, I searched the internet, and found a company in the UK selling the same wadding off the roll, at a cheaper price and only charging £5 to sent more than twice the amount - asding.com, the service was fast and polite - I'll definitely be back.
Don't tell, but as the quilt was for me, and because I got an awful lot of free, good quality polyester thread in a large range of colours when I bought my new sewing machine, I quilted it with polyester thread (I pieced with cotton thread). The colours for the front and back were such a good match, it looks great and it didn't break once! The quilting isn't always as even as I'd like, I was in a hurry to get it finished and in use, but I'm pleased with it overall.
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