For Christmas Rob received a box containing a quilt top, a sheet (for backing), a bunch of random length binding strips, two balls of remaindered sock yarn and a label. He also got a promise that as soon as I could get some batting it would become a proper quilt to keep in his office at home (which doubles as our spare room).

This quilt was as comfortable to make as it is to curl up under. It's a scrap quilt big enough for a twin size bed (like our spare bed) at 60" x 80" (150 cm x 200 cm). For the top I cut out 192 5 1/2" (13.75 cm) squares out of a variety of green, brown and muilti-coloured (but blending with green and brown in some way) fabrics. I think the most squares all of one fabric is twelve and there are a few things that only show up once. I cut 2 1/4" binding strips from most of the same fabrics and a few others at the same time.

I sewed the squares together 12 wide by 16 long. I chain pieced first as twos then as fours and continued on until I had three big strips and sewed those together. I put all my squares in a basket and just pulled them out at random. I didn't worry about which prints or solids fell where except to make sure I didn't sew anything to an identical square. I discovered some fantastic combinations along the way and it was really neat to see how different fabrics would look when they had different neighbours.

I was able to get the batting the same weekend I painted my studio but had to wait until everything was set up again (and Abby was in her crate for the night) before I could continue sewing. Putting together the quilt sandwich took up my entire studio floor. Instead of basting and quilting I used the sock yarns to tie the layers together at all the square intersections, alternating between brown and green yarn. The ties make the quilt softer and more fluid than I usually find quilting does. It also went a lot faster. Zeke helped out with the tying process.





I was able to do the binding the following day. I sat down at my table and chain pieced strips of fabric until my basket was empty.


When I bound the quilt I discovered that I probably had enough binding to go around two more times! I'm always worried I will run out of binding so this was kind of nice but a few fabrics I'd particularly liked did not end up in the quilt.


Part of the fun of a scrap quilt is that at least some of the fabrics in it are familiar and have stories. When I showed Rob his finished quilt he looked at it and picked out things he recognized from other projects: a skirt, a bag, a gift for someone else. Another part of the fun was using some fabrics that I'd never brought myself to cut into before - those pieces I got because I loved them and then could never find the perfect project for - it's nice to know that they are in something of Rob's.

Rob helped me take a picture of our quilt so you'd be able to see the whole thing. It's bigger than you expect when you're trying to hold it up (though I am a bit short). I'm so very please with how this turned out. It is the largest quilt I've made to date (and probably the largest quilt I could reasonably stuff through my sewing machine) and used more traditional skills than I've employed in the past. This quilt has pieced squares, proper borders and beautiful mitred corners (I love those corners every time I see them).

The quilt over all is 120 cm x 146 cm (47 1/4" x 57 1/2"). The centre panels is made up of twelve 25.5 cm x 25.5 cm (10" x10") squares. The borders are 10 cm (4"), 4 cm (1 1/2") and 7.5 cm (3"). The binding is slightly less than 1 cm (1/4").*

Making up the squares for the centre of the quilt was really fun. I used a technique called confetti piecing that I learned from a book I won at a guild meeting a few years ago (Crazy Quilts by Machine by J. Marsha Michler); it's wonderful for using up odd scraps of fabric. You basically just sew pieces of fabric together at odd angles and then cut them up and sew them to different pieces of fabric at different angles. Making the squares felt a bit like making cookies: once my pieces of fabric were starting to look the way I wanted I pieced them together until I had sections large enough to cut my squares out of; then I pieced all the scraps together again and cut out more squares. Eventually I had only narrow pieces left so I pieced them end to end and made my border. So fun.

We didn't bother to take a picture of the back but the fabric is the same as the background on the front except for a strip across the top and along one side where I had to add some other Christmas fabrics to make it big enough. I also added a label in one corner so that when I am old and senile (or if the quilt is ever given away or handed down) we'll know when I made it.

Most of the quilting is just stitch-in-the-ditch but I used a pretty, variegated thread that sort of plays with the wild piecing. I added some lines down the middles of the squares and around the outside (halfway through the first border - you can see it better in yesterday's post) to add interest and to make sure the batting stays put.

* I do all my quilting (in fact all my sewing unless the pattern says otherwise) in inches but being Canadian like to give both metric and imperial measurements when I can. Also 57" means very little to me when I try to visualize it but I can do 1.5 m just fine.

I finished something this weekend. Rob gave me a fabulous gift and kept Abby with him for all of Saturday morning. I felt so liberated I almost didn't know what to do with my time. I did some useful stuff like the dishes and some tidying around the house and then I sat down and finished the binding on this quilt (you've seen it before here, here and here). I'll try to get a picture of the whole thing sometime soon but couldn't wait to post it. It's done just in time for our Christmas decorating and will spend December on our couch in the livingroom, perfect for snuggling under to watch a movie. I think White Christmas would be appropriate (I love the dresses in that movie).