The completed quilt series

I took my time, and over the course of several days, finished up the now infamous yellow quilt, and with that completed the whole series.  Four oversized lap quilts with matching pillows in Red, Blue, Green, and Yellow - one set for each of us.

Now that they’re finished, I thought you might like to know some of the details about how these all came together.

The Basic Quilt Instructions: These are mostly based on the Easy Lap Quilt from Bend the Rules Sewing.  It was the first set of quilt instructions I ever read, which left me feeling like it was something I could actually do!  There was no fancy piecing to make the top, no special equipment (i.e. walking foot) required, and it was a nice, manageable size.  If you’ve always wanted to try making a quilt, but find the idea intimidating, I wholeheartedly recommend this book.  I did have a little trouble understanding the binding instructions, but I was able to fill in some of the gaps with online instructional video clips.

The Quilt Tops: Rather than use the method described in the book, I decided to use fat quarters, which were already cut to size for me.  In each quilt I used four full FQs in the corners, quartered FQs in the center section, and halved FQs to fill in the blanks.  I completely avoided measuring anything by doing it this way.  (Although it ended up making the finished quilt about 10 inches wider and 20 inches longer than the original design, and almost twin bed size.)  I also kept consistent from quilt to quilt by using the same patterns on each one, in exactly the same arrangement, but in different color schemes.  All of these fabrics came from Amy Butler’s Lotus collection.

The Pillows: I used the main polka dot fabric from each quilt and made a matching pillow case for a throw pillow.  They were made envelope-style, using a square of dot fabric for the front, and two overlapping rectangles of the backing fabric.  All backing fabrics for the pillowcases and quilts were former bedsheets.

Now that I’ve finished these, I think I’m done quilting for a while.  Although I have to admit the idea of gifting several people on my Christmas list with (slightly less ambitious) lap quilts of their own keeps crossing my mind.  I could make them without a binding, and instead of quilting them, I could tie them together at intervals - even maybe put a few clay buttons on them.  Oh, my head hurts from having too many ideas!!

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Categories: sewing, show and tell