A few months ago, a young friend asked me to help her make a quilt. I like to use the
Cloud Nine pattern as a first quilt for a couple of reasons. First, it's very easy and fast to make. Second, the pieces are big enough to use some great large-scale prints. Third, it's forgiving. If a seam or two goes off by a few threads, it all comes out in the end. We went to Quilting by the Yard to pick out fabrics, and she was unerring in her preferences. She found every one of the prints in a single line, even though they weren't arranged together on the shelf. (I can't find a selvage strip, so I can't remember what the line was called. ...Edited to clarify: the line is "13 going on 30" by Maywood Studios, very chic and bold!) She chose a pretty sky blue as her background neutral.
We got all the fabrics pressed and cut in an afternoon. She had already done a few small sewing projects in her 4H club, so she was pretty familiar with basic machine operation. We had to figure out how to set her up with a nice 1/4" seam, and she got the hang of it right away. It took one or two short sessions to get the blocks assembled, then she sewed one entire row together. But then the project went into a box, as projects so often do, and waited...until finally last week we managed to get together at her house one evening and she got two more full rows done. This afternoon she came to my house and worked straight through 95+° heat to get the whole top finished!!
Next, she's on the hunt for some fabric to use on the back and we'll get together to baste the layers.
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| Diligently working in the summer heat |
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| A finished top!! |
