For about a year, an interest in trying out quilting has been brewing in me. I bought myself a book about patchwork just after Christmas last year and read it from start to finish, but it took something more to tip me over the edge. This something was staying with Cassie in New York. She is an expert quilter and has a big collection of quilts, both her own as well as antique ones. She made me sleep under a beautiful Welsh wholecloth quilt and apparently it proved too much for me because I came home with a dream of making a quilt of my own.
Shortly after I came back, Cassie sent me a link to the International Quilt Study Center where you can browse their collection of quilts. I got lost on that page for days and of all the beautiful quilts they have, the Amish ones really got to me. They have simple graphic patterns, which is a style I like a lot. It surprised me how modern they look, I couldn't believe at first that they are over a hundred years old. I have to admit that I have always had strong prejudice againts quilting, my image of it has always been strongly connected to the Little House on the Prairie TV series, which I used to watch as a kid. So if you had asked me a year ago what I thought about quilting I would have answered: yuck! So tacky! I realize now how wrong I was - I mean, of course you can just do whatever you like, no one's saying you have to make prairie looking quilts!
After drooling for a while over the Amish quilts, I chose the Irish chain pattern for my quilt. I decided to start with a smaller blanket to throw over myself on the sofa when it gets chilly, so I was limited to one repeat of the chain pattern. To stretch the size to about 120 cm by 120 cm (48'' x 48'') I added a few borders and with a few modifications of the original pattern, this is what I ended up with
The pattern lends itself very well to strip piecing and before I knew, the patchwork blocks (which I showed a picture of last week) were ready. Then I sewed them together and began attaching the borders, first the black one
and then the red. That's where I was at yesterday and today I woke up very excited to attach the last border, the wide black one. But when I had cut the border strips, I ran into trouble. Since the corners are mitered, you need the strips to be quite a bit longer than the actual measurements and as it turns out I didn't have a long enough piece of black fabric. Then I remembered that I had already bought black fabric for the backing yesterday and thought that I could use some of that for the borders. But no, no. The lady at the fabric store had cut out 3 meters of black fabric for me, but it was slightly different from the one I used for the top, hooray!
The thing with me is that when I'm on a roll, I get very impatient and waiting for the fabric store to open tomorrow was simply out of the question. So I sat down and thought, and came up with this solution
I have to say that I'm really happy about it, I think it looks even nicer than the plain black border. It's funny how accidents often turn into something good. I even had just the right amount of red strips already cut out to do the corners. All is well with the world. This is where I'm at right now. I've already pieced the corner blocks, so I'm going to go now and finish the top. This sure is fun. Dangerously fun.
