Many, many years ago an amazing friend and her equally amazing mom (my “second” mom) gifted me a beautiful quilt kit. It was a nautical theme using fabrics from a Moda line and it had gorgeous colors and patterns. Now, this is right when we were starting our family and I admit, I was a little distracted. I put it aside temporarily until I could concentrate on the pattern properly.
Once I got my kiddos into a nice napping routine, I was able to pull it out again and get to work on it. As I read through the pattern instructions, I realized this pattern includes applique. Now, I know I shouldn’t be afraid of applique and frankly, it would be nice to have a portable quilting project. However, it was more than I was willing to concentrate on and I tabled the project again.
Since then I have pulled this project out a few times. Once I even set out the fabric with full determination to complete it, and inevitably I put it away again. I felt defeated and embarrassed that my hang up was the applique. There are so many different ways to complete applique now; with a sewing machine and iron-on or the old fashioned needle-and-thread method. But no matter what, I couldn’t get past the applique.
Throughout the year I have made it my mission to complete projects that have been sitting around for way too long. I have focused on fabric bundles bought with specific intent and then never completed. And still, I avoided this project.
I have learned a lot about quilting this year and more specifically, my style of quilting. After finishing the Mischievous Cats Quilt last month, I was sifting through my fabrics and found this nautical quilt kit. I decided there was no more hiding from it, but I also decided there’s no hard-set rule telling me I had to follow the pattern. I can do whatever I want with the kit, and it gave me a wonderful collection of fat quarters to work with, not to mention a fun red panel and wonderful yards of border and filler fabrics. It even gave me a binding fabric.
My first step was to cut up the panel and determine what size block I needed to make based off that measurement. Next, I pulled a couple more reds from my stash to create more balance between blue and red and got to work on a hidden nine patch pattern. I used every inch of the fat quarters and cut as many squares as I could out of each. I assembled the nine-patches and then cut them up for the pattern.
As I laid out the small blocks, I realized I didn’t have quite enough. Enter the border fabric. There was enough of that to complete the nine-patch blocks and also have cornerstones. When it was all assembled, the quilt top was a square. Now the original pattern from the kit was also a square, but it felt like it was an awkward size. I have a cream floral fabric in my stash that matched the floral patterns of the blues perfectly. I put a strip of that on the top and bottom and finished up with the border fabric on top and bottom.
Voila!
I created my own pattern from a kit! I used almost every fabric it came with, and as an added bonus I pulled some fabrics from my stash. Man, this one felt like a tremendous win! I found a great backing fabric that had a nautical feel to it and added some of the blue binding fabric to make it work.
I kept the quilting simple with a basic meander across the whole quilt in navy blue. It was time to complete the binding and I knew it was going to be close, but I calculated I had enough even though I used some of the fabric for the backing.
Uh-oh…
Well, I almost had enough. Honestly, adding the small little piece of blue anchor fabric to that small section of the binding gave it the authentic patchwork feel that the front of the quilt has while high-lighting the tag . It looks like it was truly a patchwork project made with love.
Now, as I was working on this project my son, the baby at the time I was gifted this kit and is now 11, asked what my plan was for it. I didn’t really have a plan; I was just trying to complete all of the projects I’ve been meaning to do. He immediately claimed it as his! He would ask every day how it was coming and when it would be done. And now that it’s completed, it dresses his bed. He claims it’s the warmest of his blankets. I’m so glad he loves it so much, and I’m so proud of myself for finally completing this project.
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