Happy New Year! I ended 2022 by finishing and delivering this quilt to my friends, as a wedding gift for their wedding that happened in October 2019. No, it did not take me three years to make this. I just didn’t have time to make it at the time because I was bogged down in sewing my bridesmaid dress and then the pandemic happened and I was waiting for fabric to speak to me and tell me that it was meant to be a quilt in Jenn’s home. Blah blah blah. You know how it goes. But then Jen Hewett released her collection Unruly Nature and it strongly Spoke to me. And finally the quilt happened!
Jenn never knew I intended to make her a quilt for her wedding, and I kept quiet about it because I knew that if I told her then I’d feel a strange sense of pressure and urgency to make a quilt. Which was not the mood I wanted to be in when I sewed a cute quilt for one of my best friends. So I just kept it in the back of my mind for 2-3 years until inspiration finally struck alongside quilty motivation, and then this quilt could be born!
For this quilt, I wanted to use a simple pattern that didn’t cut up the fabric very much so that the prints could take center stage. I found a free pattern from Cloud9 called the Courtyard Quilt that was exactly what I was looking for. The downside is that the pattern is free because it’s promoting a specific fabric collection, and that collection had way fewer prints (10) than Unruly Nature (26). And the Courtyard pattern also doesn’t even use the entirety of each fat quarter, which kinda irritates me. I know it’s a free pattern, and maybe this is a thing that’s common in the quilting world, but I just don’t understand why you would intentionally create a bunch of strangely sized scraps that you’ll have to find another use for. So I didn’t do that. I used all of the FQs up completely to make as many blocks as I could, and then I figured out the dimensions of my finished quilt after that. The 26 FQs resulted in 99 blocks (instead of the 30 in the original pattern, created from 10 FQs), which I then split into two piles of 49 with one left over. This created two quilts that were 7 blocks square, and finished quilt dimensions of ~62″x62″ if my math is correct. You may be wondering where the second quilt is, and the answer is that the top is fully finished and it’s sandwiched, basted, and ready to quilt (but still unfinished). I’m keeping it for myself so it’ll be a sister quilt to the one I gave Jenn. The reason I didn’t finish both at once was because B and I were going up to visit Jenn and her husband for a few days this past week and I wanted to finish hers in time to gift it in person. That mission was successfully accomplished, with just enough time for me to take photos the morning before we left. The photos in this post were taken at 8:30am in -14C weather, so if I look a little chilly, that’s why! The lighting was really lovely, but let’s just say it was convenient that I was photographing a quilt so I could just wrap myself in it. As for my quilt, I’ll finish it soon. The completion of the Santa suits has left me with a lot of Project Finishing Energy so I’m determined to not let the second quilt languish for long.
For quilting, I just did “straight” line quilting so I wouldn’t compete with the fabric/quilt design. I say “straight” because the lines aren’t truly straight, but from a distance you can’t tell at all. I used the quilt pattern to stay on track, and the ones in between I did periodically mark to make sure they stayed even. I’m saying this because I think it’s valuable to not get caught up in things not being Perfect because chances are you’re the only one who will notice. I have “imperfections” on most of the quilts I’ve made, but now that they’re in use regularly and I am cuddling with them all the time, I don’t even recall what I felt were imperfections in the first place. The one thing that does bother me is that I ran out of white chalk in my chaco pen and had to switch to my pink one, and it didn’t wash out completely! I have never had this issue with the pink on any fabrics, but of course it had to go rogue. I think it’s caught in the stitches of the quilting, and hopefully it will wash out with a couple more washes. It’s definitely lighter since having the final wash/dry before I gifted it, and it’s not that blatant anyway. But I still hope it washes out eventually! If you look at the photos below, the quilting lines probably look straight (which is the whole point) but if someone (obviously a jerk) whipped out their ruler to check, they definitely wouldn’t be. So, quilt as you want to and it’ll look beautiful no matter what! That’s my message for you, especially if you have never made a quilt and might be considering taking the plunge.
I love Jen Hewett’s colour selection and fabric designs, and I’m super happy I got the full collection so that the colours could all be featured in one project as they were intended. I’m also happy that I get to have a quilt of my own that looks just like this one, so I don’t have to pine for Jenn’s!
