I have a modern wholecloth quilt to show you today.
Much like the plumber with a leaking shower, I once was a quilter without a quilt on my own bed.
But that sad state of affairs is no longer because I recently finished, not one, not two, but three (!!) queen sized quilts for me, me, me (and the mister). And now that I’ve finally edited the photos, I’d like to show you the first one today.
The beautiful fabric you see there is called Whimsicöl Tide and is from Jeni Baker’s second fabric line, Nordika. This fabric is known as a border print fabric as it has a lovely design printed along just one of the selvedges. They are very popular for dress making.
As soon as I saw Jeni’s collection this fabric was the stand out for me. I loved the colours, the design, the Norwegian aesthetic. Plus knowing how it would feel given it’s an Art Gallery Fabric – there was no doubt I needed this fabric all over my bed.
I’m happy to report this is the ultimate cheat’s quilt – the top only requires three seams. I think of it as a modern wholecloth quilt.
I took equal lengths of yardage of Jeni’s fabric and sewed them together in mirror-image fashion.
Fabric image courtesy of AGF
I didn’t make any attempts to match the patterns along the seam because 1. that would be crazy and 2. the flower haze did a great job of disguising the seam.
I removed the border print flowers from the topmost yardage as I didn’t want to detract from the border at the foot of the bed. This left my quilt top rather short, so I extended it again with a strip of red fabric that closely matched the red on the panel.
I sent this quilt out for long-arm quilting. The quilter found a lovely edge-to-edge design that echoes the floral motif rather nicely.
I chose a thread to match the red fabrics because it helped to blend the two together. (Although a very close match, the reds in the panel and in the solid are not identical.) I also really love seeing the quilting on the teal portion of the fabric.
I backed the quilt with a Carolyn Friedlander wideback (no seams, yay!) in a black crosshatch. The binding was more of the red solid. I even machine sewed the binding – a first for me (thank you, Rita, for your wonderful tutorial on this.)
I’m so happy with how this turned out. It was simple to piece and came together very quickly thanks to the lovely long-arm quilting and machine binding.
This just popped up on my Pinterest feed! What a gorgeous quilt, I love how you used my panel!!
Super beautiful use of this gorgeous fabric! Now I want one. Not much chance of getting my hands on this fabric anymore, though, I’ll bet.
Oh, this is just beautiful! I love this print, too and as you know that aqua colour is a favourite of mine as well! I love how you constructed the quilt, it really looks like one piece, the seams and red lower border really are only noticable when you really look for them! The quilt really looks very sophisticated and at the same time cheerful! :-)
Breathtakingly beautiful: fabric & quilting.
And the binding of course
Simple can be soooo beautiful!
Thanks for the “how to” ‘s
You are a tease Kirsty- you have me with my nose to the laptop screen searching for those elusive seams…. What a beauty you have created! These colours are just gorgeous! The quilting finishes it off beautifully too! And I can just see some bold embroidery on that skull, in a Day of the Dead fashion…. I might need that pattern?!
It’s a very pretty quilt! Love that fabric!
ahhhh teal!!!!! Good to see it back again ?. It’s beautiful Kirsty and I love that it was so easy to sew. Love the teal and red together.
This is gorgeous! Do you remember how many yards of fabric you purchased to make this lovely quilt?
Hi Amy, you can easily customise this quilt to suit your own bed (with differing preferences for quilt size and mattress thicknesses, sometimes one size doesn’t fit all.) I just used my tape measure – I let it hang down as far as I like my quilts to reach off the side of the bed and measured across to the otherside with the same amount of drop. Whatever this measurement was (85″ from memory for me) I just multiplied it by two (to provide two panel lengths) and then added another another run of the same length but in the red solid to my order. I didn’t use all the width of the red in the quilt, but the leftover was great to use as binding. I hope that helps!