I made a king size quilt in light gray and dark scrappy prints. Gracious I love how it turned out. I don't even think this pattern has a name. I saw some quilters call it basketweave, one called it Twinkle, one called it lattice, so I am sticking with that name. But really it's just a Snowball block alternating with a Nine Patch block. I don't do complicated patterns. Ever.
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| I am 6" tall with these boots and still the quilt drags on the floor. Huge! |
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| image courtesy of Diary of a Quilter |
My inspiration was this antique red and white quilt, early 20th century, found over at
Diary of a Quilter. Big scale, no border. Borders are not traditional so I rarely if ever add a border. I think it dates a quilt. I want it timeless, if that's possible.
Do you know how hard it is to find larger quilt patterns for larger quilts? No, I don't mean that quilters don't
offer measurements for king size quilts, they do, I mean that the scale of most quilt patterns are ridiculously tiny. For example, for this quilt I found a pattern called Twinkle that called for 6" blocks.
Six-inch frickin' blocks for a king size quilt! That is insane. I would feel like I was working in a crayon factory; and my job was to put the Cornflower Blue crayons in the boxes, all day long, week after week. I would have needed 144 blocks to make a king size. I'd rather chew broken glass. I'll use this book for smaller quilts though, adorable layouts.
I decided to calculate my own measurements for a 12" block. That way I would need
just 72 blocks, still a lot, but doable. I used 6.5 yards of Kona cotton in this light gray color and then bought a bunch of 5" pieces of fabrics from various small-scaled prints. I don't usually like fabric collections, I think they look too 'put together'. I opt to be my own curator of fabric.
Measurements:
-Make 36 Snowball blocks, 12". Cut your gray squares 12" and the corner squares, 4.5"
-Make 36 Nine Patch blocks, 12". Cut your patterned and gray strips 4.5" and strip sew, then cut 4.5" sections and sew into nine-patch blocks.
-These aren't great instructions, you can google how to make a Snowball and Nine Patch block. Sorry.
-Finished size is approximately 90" x 104" after washing.
You will have 9 blocks across and 8 blocks going down for a king.
Sewing this large of a project is a workout just hefting all that fabric. Notice below that not all my points match up. I am a lukewarm quilter, I am not a perfectionist. My life motto is, "it's good enough." Plus you'll never see the mis-matched points once it is sewn, quilted, and crinkly.
Don't let perfectionism stop you from quilting!
I sent the quilt to a friend who has a long arm. We chose this geometric pattern. I don't like swirls, flowers, or anything froo-froo. Keep it simple, keep it geometric.
I cut 2" strips for the binding and finally bought these clips for holding the binding in place. What took me so long? Oh right, I only make a quilt every few years. It's been four years since the last. This adorable yellow print from Riley Blake is delicious. I have always loved yellow. I machine bind because life is too short to bind by hand. Again, I'd rather chew broken glass.
I always add the year I made the quilt instead of a tag on the back. It is subtle in the yellow thread, and that's the point. This is embroidered with my 1"
Redwork Alphabet available on my website. You can see how I embroidered the year
on this quilt and
this quilt as well.
A bed layered with linens in the my favorite. Right now in February I have a down comforter folded back, and my quilt folded back as well. Euro shams in white linen, topped off with a lumbar pillow in an African mudcloth. The perfect combo of modern and cottage-y.
There's nothing like a quilt folded up at the end of a bed. Perfection.
