I'm a quilter now!
OK, maybe not a quilter, but I made a quilt. My first start-to-finish quilt. Historically, I've tended to have grand quilting dreams, but little follow-through, until now. I think the two things that stopped me from embarking on a(nother) quilt project (remember that overly-ambitious cathedral windows quilt I started very early in my sewing career and quickly abandoned?) are: 1) size and 2) fabric.
I haven't wanted to sew a quilt that's too big to handle at home. And I didn't want to buy new fabric for a quilt when I had a wild amount of fabric in my stash, already at my fingertips.
Enter the Mess Patterns Goderich Quilt, a gorgeous sunset (sunrise? moonrise?) lap-sized quilt designed to be beginner friendly with minimal and easy cutting, as well as quick and simple piecing. The size was right, the modern design beautiful, and I thought I could make some fabrics from my stash work.
Plus, I could support the lovely Merrill, who is a gem that I have been lucky enough to meet in person a couple of times through the wonderful world of the sewing internet.
For this quilt, I dug deep into my stash for sewing leftovers and scraps from my garment sewing. I ended up landing on some assorted lightweight chambrays and denims, leftover from previous projects, some of which are ANCIENT:
- the pink/light red is left from this McCall's 6044 shirt Tim
- the greyish blue from this Belcarra shirt
- the deep blue denim from these Yanta Overalls
- the mauve is from my Harper Tunic.
- I used a leftover chambray blend for the backing, too. I think it's left from this Glebe pants / Pona Jacket suit I made.
I can't believe I've been dragging these scraps around for so long.
I think maybe only the mauve-y chambray is 100% cotton; the others are blends of some sort, and slightly different weights, textures and sheens. But they worked together really well!
The Goderich was pretty easy to cut out, even though I'm not very practiced with the ruler and rotary cutter. Probably the trickiest part was that my garment fabrics were wider than the pattern was designed for (typical quilting cotton 42/43" width) and some of them (the mauve in particular) were purely scraps- no full width yardage. So I had to be creative.
When cutting and sewing, you just have to pay close attention to which strip is which so you don't mix them up (or somehow forget to cut one one inch by WOF strip of greyish blue like I did, then run out out fabric and have to trim the extra inch off the top of the quilt).
This was my first time quilting something using my walking foot (I have quilted something before, but it went very badly precisely because I didn't use a walking foot). But this quilting went very well - my mom set me up for success by helping me make and pin the quilt/batting/backing sandwich. She's an experienced quilter, so I ran many of my quilt-making questions by her throughout the process.
I did straight, horizontal lines of quilting through the navy stripes, just a foot's width from each of the seams. Then on the top, above the waterline, I used a coral-y pink thread to outline the sun and make some rays emanating from the setting sun. Luckily I had one of those quilting rulers with all the angles already drawn out, so it made placing the sunrays quite simple.
I bound the quilt in the same navy denim I used for the stripes. I did machine binding because I couldn't bear the thought of that much hand stitching. Don't look too closely at my poorly mitered corners, friends.
I did, however, hand-sew a patch with a couple labels on the back, as well as a hanging sleeve, both made with remnants from this Harrison Shirt.
I just love how my Goderich quilt turned out! I'm really proud of it and found it deeply satisfying to make it entirely from stash and scrap materials. I also love that it reminds me of the beautiful and often epic sunsets from the Vermont side of Lake Champlain.
I loved the quilt so much that I ended up using it as the basis for choosing paint colors for my guest bedroom in my new house. I went with what I'm calling a "sunset glow" paint color (it's pink), with navy curtains and a chambray linen duvet cover. I can't wait to get it hung up on the wall!
