AAAHHHH!

 Today I finished S's quilt.  We had bought the material on the 7th of January, so it was actually quite a quick project, considering it is a monster: 118" wide by 115" long.  (And considering that I was busy teaching violin and conducting the string group.)

I sewed the top in two sections, one 7 blocks by 14 blocks, the other 6 blocks by 14 blocks.  I quilted the two sections and then sewed the top together and hand sewed the backing together.

Then I made the borders (10") separately, quilted the middle seam on both sides, and then sewed the borders to the quilt.

Picture #2 is the quilting of the borders happening.

Pictures number 3 shows sewing the borders to the top of the quilt.  Then I turned it over, trimmed off the extra batting and backing and hand sewed that seam.  You can just see in #3 that the borders have been somewhat quilted and the binding applied (and hand sewed to the backing) before attaching them to the body of the quilt.  This worked very, very well, as I didn't have to deal with the whole bulk of the quilt when working on the borders.

I cut off the two bottom corners which would have dragged on the floor, and even inserted a godet at either corner of the cut off section.  It worked very well and looks smart.

Picture #4 shows the quilt on her bed, with those lovely milk chocolate brown walls.  You can just see in the corners of the windows the stark white trim that sparks everything
 up so beautifully.  The floor is a dark maple laminate, and the room look terrific.

This pattern is in a book called "Fun & Easy Scrap Quilting" from House of White Birches.  The pattern is called Nine-Patch Special and was a very easy pattern to do.  The original called for scrappy materials, but we chose to do it in just a few contrasting fabrics.  We both loved the fabric when we bought it, and we still think it's beautiful.  Also we like the fact that it's not a terribly feminine or masculine looking quilt.
She was smart enough to take along one of the drapery tiebacks when we went to look for material, so there's wonderful harmony with those different fabrics.

I showed the completed quilt to both the town quilting club on Tuesday and the country quilting club today.  We always like to share our accomplishments, and I find it inspiring to see what other women have made.

There is another pattern in this book that I've used several times for baby quilts or lap quilts.  The Color Block Lap Quilt also goes together very easily and looks great when it's finished.  Both these quilts can be done in a variety of colour ways for completely different results.

One of the challenges of making this quilt was that the pattern was for a single bed quilt, 64" x 70."  I had to redraft the pattern to accommodate a very high queen size bed, and that meant refiguring the yardages also.  It came out pretty close: there is very little material left over, not even a full WOF larger than 4" of any of the fabrics, and of some fabrics there are just small scraps.  Because I left the borders for last I was able to use almost everything by cutting them as large as possible from the fabric we had.

I would highly recommend this book, especially these two patterns, as they are quick and easy to accomplish and produce a very good looking quilt.  You can look up House of White Birches, which is in Berne, Indiana, at "www.whitebirches.com"  

Happy Quilting!