Scrappy Neutral Quilt For A Master Bedroom

It is rare for me to make a quilt for a specific purpose in our home. I have wanted a new quilt for my bed for as long as I can remember. There is an old family quilt that has been on our bed in the winter for a number of years and this new quilt is a bigger, neutral version of that quilt.

Here's an old, blurry picture I found of the inspiration quilt. This quilt was made by my grandmother or great grandmother. There are some awesome fabrics in this old quilt.

 And here it is on the bed. I do love the mix of fabrics here but I needed a neutral and timeless quilt that would last through whatever crazy color scheme we wanted for our bedroom. This quilt also barely extends beyond the top of the bed so something bigger was needed.

Each scrappy panel finishes at 15 inches wide The quilt top is made purely from stash. It used up almost all of my neutral stash. There are six scrappy panels so the finished dimensions of the quilt are 90 x 90. This is plenty big enough to cover our queen size bed.

I spent a lot of time debating the quilting design. Part of me wanted to go for simple vertical wavy or straight lines over the entire quilt. However, I would always think that I had taken the easy way out to go that route. Instead, I went for free motion quilting each piece with a different design. It was a lot of fun and took a really long time to complete. I would work on it for 15-20 minutes each day before work and then an hour or two over the weekend.

For some sections I quilted around the print motif like with these birds. There are lots of hidden messages in this quilt, too. In the panel just under the birds it says "LISTEN to the birds sing!"

The back is Kona Dusty Blue, which does work with the upcoming bedroom color scheme but is also neutral enough to stand the test of time. The binding is the same as the backing. The back of the quilt has a graffiti quilting look to it.

Of course, all those messages are mirror image on the back so you either need a mirror or a careful eye to decode them. The center right of this picture shows an "I love U".

Even the front newsprint fabric is spreading the message of love.

These pictures were all taken before the quilt was washed. Funny thing is my dryer died the day I finished this quilt. Impatient me washed it anyway and it is hanging out on the clothes line to dry. Those summer afternoon thunderstorms need to stay away today!

Here's another look at the quilting, this time with the message "More Dreaming". I lost track of all the messages in this quilt. It will be fun to run across them as this quilt gets used on a daily basis.

I'm really excited to be adding this project to the finished list. My interests have expanded a lot this summer with food gardening, bird watching, drawing, and painting. Other than a few smaller projects, my sewing machine might get a rest for a while. No matter what other interests develop, my heart is always with quilting so I know I'll be back.

Neutral Stack and Slash Quilt Top

For years I have wanted to make a quilt for the master bedroom. It is always more difficult for me to decide on a design and color scheme for a quilt with a very specific purpose than for one I am making for fun (well, they are all fun to make, aren't they?!). The quilt that is on the master bedroom bed in the colder months is one that was made by my grandmother or great grandmother. It could have even been both of them as they lived together for many years of their later adult lives.

It is five fifteen inch wide columns of scraps sewn together in a seemingly random way. Some are fairly straight rectangles, some are quite wonky, and others are pieced.

I love this quilt, but it is not quite big enough for the bed. There are only four inches or so that hang down on either side. I had been thinking about replicating this quilt for a long time, and recently we started talking about painting this room. Since I really want this quilt to be timeless, I decided that the wall needed to be the focus for color and that a quilt for this room should remain neutral. That way it can live on through whatever color schemes come our way.

These pictures are a little on the yellow side as it was early morning and the sun was not all the way up yet. My family has been watching skeptically from the sidelines. One bit of advice from one of the teens... mom, don't put too much pee colored fabric in it, okay? Ha. He does have a good eye, and he was correct in his assessment. There is white, cream, gray, brown, black, taupe, and all sorts of other neutrals. There are a few pieces with other colors but not enough to take away from this truly neutral quilt.

This is the largest quilt top I have ever made and it put quite a dent in the neutral stash, and it is made entirely from stash.The amount hanging over the sides is just perfect. This quilt top is made of six fifteen inch wide strips that are around ninety inches long. The finished quilt as it is will be ninety inches square. The width is perfect.

The length may be a bit too much. I'm going to think about that and may trim it back a little. I've never had a quilt long enough to cover the pillows. I could always fold it back at the top. It would be nice to have extra covers to burrow under on a cold night.

See that rose fabric, the black and white one? That came from my grandmother. It had originally been cut out to become a blouse or jacket. I love that there are fabrics old and new in this quilt top.

I am excited about quilting this one. It will be easy to go quilting crazy so I will have to be careful not to take it too far. The original quilt has simple hand quilting. I am definitely going the machine quilting route and will likely vary the quilting design every few segments of the quilt.

I left the quilt top on the bed this morning when I left for work. I'm usually the last one home at the end of the day so we'll see what the family thinks about it now. I am happy to be making progress on this long desired quilt.

Linking up to Finish It Up Friday over at Crazy Mom Quilts.

Skull Quilt - A Halloween Quilt as a Christmas Gift

Yes, I know it is unusual to give someone a Halloween quilt as a Christmas gift, but I could not have done better with creating a gift fitting for its recipient. For a while now, my daughter has wanted me to make a quilt for my son-in-law. And I wanted to make him one, but our tastes are very different so it took me a while to channel his desires into a quilt.

I like all the colors, bright and bold. He likes neutrals. His favorite holiday is Halloween. My least favorite holiday is Halloween. Somewhere along the way, I decided to investigate a skull quilt. I think I was inspired by some of the brightly colored skulls from Day of the Dead celebrations.


The resulting quilt is a very close replica of this picture I saw on Pinterest. The picture did not link back to a specific source so I am not able to give full and proper credit.

Most of my quilts are created from stash, but this one required a more limited, neutral set of fabrics, and fortunately a little bit of online shopping landed just the right combination for this quilt.

It was fun to piece and fun to quilt. Using the inspiration photo as a guide, it became much like assembling a mosaic.

The eyes, nose, and mouth are heavily quilting in hopes they would recede into the bones of the skull. The spirally eyes were especially fun to quilt.

The pebble quilting that surrounds the skull is one of my favorite ways to quilt.

Finally, I wanted to personalize the quilt so instead of a traditional label, I quilted Zack's name and the year right into the border surrounding the skull. We got together with Zack and family a couple of weeks before Christmas as they will be travelling to see his family on Christmas day.

The backing is made from the leftover fabric.

This guy makes a big quilt at 82 x 88 inches. I loved being pushed out of my comfort zone to create this quilt for my favorite (and only, ha!) son-in-law.