More about Duvets and Quilts

Here's a picture of the Pennsylvania Dutch Hex quilt on our bed, right after it was completed. The colours are bright. You can see the lovely pattern of the quilting on the side that hangs down.

Peeking out from under the quilt you can see the new puffy duvet that I made for us to replace the hassle of sheets and blankets. It was wonderful to sleep under in the winter. Lightweight but warm. Now that duvet is history, having been worn out and discarded. The quilt is still on our bed, but the colours have faded terrifically from the sun coming in the window. Too bad!!! I refuse to draw the shades just to protect the quilt. I'm too much of a light and bright lover.

But having found out how peaceful it is to sleep

under a duvet, I decided to make a summer weight duvet for us. With lightweight white cotton for background and left-over red print from an earlier quilt, I made this quilt with a 3 oz. polyester batting for use in the summer. I washed it this morning and hung it on the line. You can see we have gloomy weather again! I pieced this one on machine, but handquilted the perimeter of each square, and then around each of the red print pieces. We've been using this for our summer cover for about nine years now. It's also just wonderful for sleeping in the summer. Lightweight, cool to the touch, and MUCH bigger than the original duvet. We needed the extra width to ensure both of us were still covered in the morning.

When I accuse Jim of hogging the covers, he says he's just helping me not overheat during the night. But I prefer to regulate my covers myself! (Although I do usually spend at least part of the night completely uncovered.)

Our new duvet is not my first try at replacing the original. I had some king sized polyester batts (quite thin) in the closet, having bought them on sale one time. I used two of them and hand stitched them to a layer of warm and natural. I made a "bag" out

of some sheets I had, and put this new compound batt into the bag. Here's a picture of part that I had to cut off, since I had made it huge. In fact, it folded over on the floor on either side of the bed.

It was way too warm from either one of us. But the blooming thing was completely stitched together. What to do?

Daughter #1 complains about trying to keep warm in bed, so I knew who should receive this duvet. I finished it up, bundled it into a plastic zip bag (one of those hardy ones you can buy at SuperStore) and took it along on a plane trip to visit her. She LOVES it. She's warm in bed in the winter now. But that left us without a winter duvet. And that led me to the last post, another try at a winter duvet for us.

At this point I have less than 1/12th of the hand stitching to finish. Then I want to bind the edges, to give them some amount of firmness so they don't fold over in the duvet cover that I bought. When it's finished I'll show you how it turned out.