I’ve had a 2 1/2 year break from quilt making. The last one I made was very special and there hasn’t been a need for a new quilt until now. New house = new bedrooms = new quilts. Well, I guess I could go out and buy bedding, but that’s not my style. Any excuse to get creative, right?!
Our house will be finished at the end of this week (eek!) then we have a marathon of cleaning the new house, moving, unpacking and cleaning the old house. We are really looking forward to it, but will be able to enjoy everything more when the work phase is over!
Oscar is especially looking forward to having a bedroom to himself. His two great loves are the solar system and the human body – we thought decorating a room solar system-style would be more tasteful than the human body!! Oscar has just turned 9 so I’m very mindful of keeping the room decorated to suit an older boy and didn’t want to make him a quilt that screamed planets.
Instead, we chose a selection of solid coloured fabric (I’ve listed them all at the end of this post) inspired by the solar system. I’ve been drawn to triangle quilts lately, this one on Instagram especially caught my eye and it was decided that the quilt would be made of lots and lots (325 to be exact!) of triangles. Sticking with a theme-neutral quilt also means that if he ever grows out of the solar system, we are not stuck with an out of place piece of bedding that a lot of work has gone into!
This quilt is definitley the biggest I have ever made. The finished measurements ended up being 91″ (231cm) x 82″ (208cm). I wanted the quilt to be big enough to sit on a queen-sized bed and tuck under completely on the bottom and two sides. I like the look of a tucked in quilt.
When I first started cutting and piecing triangles, I totally underestimated how many I would need to make the quilt big enough and ended up cutting and piecing more and more rows until it finally worked! At the moment Oscar only has a single bed, but when Harvey moves out of his cot we will do a bed shuffle and will buy a queen sized bed for Oscar. This quilt is made with forward planning in mind, but can sit folded in half on his bed now anyway!
To cut the triangles, I cut 7″ wide strips of fabric, then cut those into equilateral triangles using the 60 degree cutting line on my cutting mat and ruler. It wasn’t hard, but more time consuming than cutting squares or rectangles.
With all of the quilts I have ever sewn, I have only once had a try at machine quilting and that was using a quilt-as-you-go method. I was keen to give proper machine quilting a go though but wondered if it was worth trying for the first time on a quilt this big?! I bought myself some proper quilting gloves (they were my magic gloves and made a huge difference!) and used Matilda’s Own brand 100% cotton batting and managed to pull it off!! I’m definitely not going to be winning any prizes at the fair for my efforts, but it was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be. There are a few wonky sections and uneven stitches, but I’m super happy for my first effort and am keen to perfect my technique now!
To make it easier, I stuck with straight lines and quilted 1/4″ either side of every seam. I thought it was going to to take me weeks to get it finished, but it only took 5 or 6 hours! Hand quilting this would have taken me a few months so I was extremely happy with the quick finish it gave me.
For the back of the quilt, I bought some extra wide backing fabric to save myself the hassle of having to piece anything. When it arrived in the post though, the shop didn’t send me as much as I had ordered so I made use of a few extra rows of triangles that I hadn’t used in the front and added a happy strip down the middle. Although I didn’t want to do any more piecing, I’m really glad that I did because it really gives the back some bright character.
I had just enough solid grey fabric left to use for the binding, and then it was done! Just in time for a new bedroom in a new house…and now I’ve got three more children waiting for their new bedroom quilts! I said I wanted to perfect my machine quilting, didn’t I?!!
SUPPLIES: Triangles…Kona cotton solid in the following colours: Orange Sage Breakers Celestial Poppy red Graphite Oasis Chartreuse Corn Grass green Flame red Navy Peapod Binding…Kona cotton solid in graphite Backing…Carolyn Friedlander, Widescreen, Crosshatch in Pacific
I’ve had a 2 1/2 year break from quilt making. The last one I made was very special and there hasn’t been a need for a new quilt until now. New house = new bedrooms = new quilts. Well, I guess I could go out and buy bedding, but that’s not my style. Any excuse to get creative, right?!
When I first started cutting and piecing triangles, I totally underestimated how many I would need to make the quilt big enough and ended up cutting and piecing more and more rows until it finally worked! At the moment Oscar only has a single bed, but when Harvey moves out of his cot we will do a bed shuffle and will buy a queen sized bed for Oscar. This quilt is made with forward planning in mind, but can sit folded in half on his bed now anyway!
