Back in February I embarked on a new project, mostly to take my mind off the impending move. I was Kon mari-ing the house, ready for removals, and I had managed to sell some of my unused craft items to fund the materials for a massive quilt for our bedroom.

It made me realise how much I neglected certain areas of the house. How much stuff we had lying around that we just didn’t have use for. I will be the first to admit I’m not the tidiest of people, but when your life is going into a shipping container and you are paying for the privilege, you don’t want to pack the stuff you just don’t need or want any longer. If you’ve been living in a box and have no idea what Kon Mari is, it’s a Japanese method of organising your home. So, if you hate tidying, and you’re sick of clutter, I can definitely recommend this process.

Design

The materials I chose are by designer called April Rhodes from her Bound collection. This then created the foundation colour palette I plan to use in our bedroom. I see a dark grey feature wall behind the bed and you will have to wait for another post about our bed. The hubby plans to make it himself, I’m so excited for that!

I wanted to keep a pale theme for the quilt with the idea of dark walls in my mind but with hints of contrast, so I did swap out some of the darker samples in the range for coordinating solids. I decided to use a mixture of 12″ and 6″ squares and rotate them so it complimented the edgy style of the fabric.

As you can see my scribbled notes all around the edge, trying to make sure I had the right amount of triangles was relatively stressful!

Piecing

I took a slightly more organised approach when I cut the fabric out, I separated it into rows of the quilt to make it easier when I come to piecing the quilt top. Fair to say I learnt from my mistakes. Cutting the triangles however was therapeutic but the mantra of check twice (then check again) then cut the fabric definitely came into play.

Here are the triangles all ready to be pieced in their subsequent rows. Laying it all out on the floor made me realise very quickly how big this was going to get!

And fast forward to May and the quilt top had finally been pieced!

As I was making it I didn’t really think through how on earth I was going to quilt it, so as a 3-0 birthday gift I booked onto a long arm quilting workshop at The Little House of Patchwork. It was an excuse to add another skill to add to the tool box, but it was really good fun. As well as a necessary task to get it finished! Paying for someone to do it was simply out of budget because of its size. I soon realised once I’d finished the top I had completely underestimated how much backing fabric I needed, so I decided to make it panelled, with thanks to Olive and Flo Handcraft for drop shipping me an entire bolt of art gallery fabric to finish it just in time.

Quilting

I had to take it to The Little House of Patchwork to long arm quilt it. So once that was pieced and the batting ordered, it was ready to go! The batting I got for a steal in the sale from Joann with a voucher from my lovely in laws! The wadding/batting is Warm and Natural Cotton. You can find it here. This is the quilt is on the long arm machine in the final stages!

I’d been working on the quilt for our bedroom for quite a while. When the design that came out of my head became an actual quilt I was so pleased with the outcome. It’s a giant size quilt, a 110 x 96 inches giant. It’s heavy and has the most amazing drape. I have enough fabric to make a couple of pillowcases to match. I really love how soft the art gallery Pima cotton is.

Please excuse the mess, I had to move all the furniture just to spread this out on the floor! These last two pictures show the front and back laid out flat. I then painstakingly sewed 412 inches of bias binding to the edges. Homemade bias is so simple to make it’s just a little time consuming but the guarantee is that it will match your quilt. It didn’t take a metre of fabric to make enough. So it’s a great way to use any of the materials you have left over. Really the only thing left is a label but I have yet to decide whether to make it on the computer or using free machined text.

Here it is, in all its finished glory!