The Great Canadian Maple Leaf Quilting Adventure

I'm actually calling this the Vintage Maple Leaf Quilt because it's from a "vintage" pattern, but it has been quite the adventure. This is definitely a quilt of firsts:

• first applique quilt (yes, I've done applique blocks, but never a whole quilt)
• first quilt with wool batting
• first quilt with double batting (one layer cotton, one layer wool)
• first quilt completed with rulers (I did do those fabric Valentines for my grandson with a ruler, but that was less than a metre of fabric)
• first quilt that I've taken off the frame and reloaded it sideways
• first quilt I've had to do three passes over - one for the horizontal borders and sashing plus the leaves, one for the vertical borders and sashing and one to quilt the white background in the blocks
• first quilt I've used 2 different colours of thread to quilt (an army green for the borders, sashing and leaves and white for the block backgrounds)
• first time I've completed a quilt from a pattern that I've had for over 43 years (while I may have some books that are older than that, I don't think I have owned any of them for that length of time)

My goal was actually to complete this quilt for my daughter for Christmas. The label on the back says 2020, but that is not entirely accurate. I was alternating rows of blocks between this one and the Stitch Pink quilt, which I was making for my oldest niece. I was able to finish that one before Christmas, and the quilt top was finished for this one. But then the (mis)adventures began. When I unfolded the backing fabric, I disovered that somehow I had miscalculated the amount required and I didn't have enough. Thank the Lord, I was off work, the quilt shop was open and they still had some of the fabric left. That was the 23rd of December and they were closed December 24th and wouldn't reopen until the 4th of January. I wouldn't have been able to do any work on this quilt over the holidays if I hadn't gone in that day. Or I would have had to make a mad dash to another community with a quilt shop open and probably had to purchase the entire amount required for backing since the likelihood of matching this fabric was slim. 

Nearly perfect backing fabric for this quilt. My LQS actually had one that I liked better. It was the same design, but some of the leaves were fall colours. Unfortunately, they didn't have enough of that one. And I almost didn't have enough of this one. 😌 

The next issue was trying to get my longarm into ClearView load position. 

Since I would be using rulers, this keeps the top bar out of the way of the rulers and my arms. I watched the video and it looked pretty simple to lift and drop the bar assembly and then it would just be a matter of turning around one of the leaders to use it in this position. However, no matter how much I manhandled it (even lifting the entire frame off the floor), I could barely get it to budge. I finally called my vendor and was told to loosen a couple of the screws on each end (which is what I had thought of trying, but didn't want to try it without their go ahead), and success! Though the left end still gave me some trouble. 

Before I loaded the quilt, I also had to trim both battings so that I wouldn't have a lot hanging over the side. I trimmed them to what I thought was a generous allowance - about 8" wider than the quilt top. Apparently, wool batting scrunches itself back up somehow and once I loaded it, I discovered that I barely had enough and had to keep tugging on it to make sure it extended past the edges of the quilt top. Then, to load. As the clamps would be in the way of the ruler base, I had to have something to which the clamps could attach and then pin the other ends to the backing. Some binding remnants served the purpose. 

These are the rulers I purchased for this quilt: Wiggle Wave, Versa Tool and Straight Edge.

I bought the Versa Tool because it's supposed to be good for applique and stitch-in-the-ditch. I didn't find it really improved my accuracy for applique, and I only did enough stitch-in-the-ditch to get from one diagonal line to the next in the block backgrounds, so that would have required a quick switch back and forth from the Straight Edge to the Versa Tool and back again - not worth the effort, in my opinion. 

I finally started the quilting, but, oh my, what a lot of work quilting with rulers is! I don't know why people like it. It's tedious and time-consuming.

And my free motion quilting on the leaves was terrible. I couldn't stay on the edge of the leaves. And when I did the veins and had to travel back over my quilting, I often ended up with loops instead of my stitching going over the previous path. And what a hassle to switch between colours frequently! I was up late that first night and went to bed discouraged, and could hardly sleep because I was trying to figure out how to get this quilting done. I had pretty much made up my mind to remove it from the frame, rip out all of my stitching and just use a pantograph. I do have two different maple leaf pantographs, after all. And that was what I had originally planned on doing. But I also knew that an allover pantograph just wouldn't do this quilt justice. Those leaves needed to pop, which is what I wanted to accomplish with ruler quilting. 

In the morning, I decided not to let this defeat me and came up with a better plan of attack. I had originally planned on doing the whole quilt with one pass, completing each section as I advanced the quilt. I now recognized that that was not the best way to get this quilt quilted. Trying to do vertical as well as horizontal lines, plus changing thread colours repeatedly wasn't going to cut it. So, I now planned to quilt it in three stages: 

1. Quilt the horizontal borders and sashing, plus the leaves.
2. Reload the quilt sideways to quilt the vertical borders and sashing.
3. Switch to white thread and quilt the block backgrounds. 

I found stage 2 the easiest and stage 3 the most tedious. Stage 3 would have been much quicker and easier if I could have just quilted right over the leaves instead of having to go around them. 

Because each leaf had to be quilted individually, with the veins quilted separately from the outline, I managed to produce a large pile of thread ends. 

Some time during my quilting - I'm not sure what I did: held my finger too long on the up/down button maybe? - but suddenly my needle was stopping so low that it dragged on the quilt top a couple of times. I managed to get it up high enough to clear the quilt top, but still wasn't happy with where it was stopping - too low for my comfort. 

I asked advice in the Handi Quilter group on Facebook and finally contacted the repairman at my vendor. Ultimately, I will have to take it in for adjustment, but it was working well enough for me to comfortably finish the quilt. 

Meanwhile, I was finding that, with the ClearView load, and double batting, it was very difficult to adjust the batting to keep the wrinkles out. So there are a few places where I've got batting ridges in the quilt. I also neglected to trim all of the thread ends, and there are some places where dark threads show through the white fabric. 😖 Live and learn!

I was finding Stage 3 very tedious, and considering just finishing one block at a time, but these blocks are too wide for the throat space, so that would necessitate rolling it back and forth for each block. So I would do approximately half of each block in one row, advance the quilt and then quilt the other halves of the blocks.

Finally, the quilting was done and I took it off the frame and put it on the double bed in the basement bedroom to have a good look. 

My goal with the quilting was to make the leaves "pop." Mystery (my cat) confirmed the success of my goal when he jumped on the bed and promptly tried to play with the leaves.

Now for the binding, which is my least favourite part of any quilt. But especially when it's a bulky, heavy, double-bed sized quilt. And, with two battings, this one is heavy. And stiff because of the fairly dense quilting. I had planned on using this fabric 

It's fall colours, but that black background made me hesitate. There is no other black in this quilt. So, I decided to see if I could find something else. I was planning on going into the quilt shop when I had the chance, but then I found this fabric in my stash. 

Perfect colours, perfect theme. And today, because we had two severe weather warnings in effect (freezing rain and high winds), and I have a 45-minute commute to work, I opted to take one of the Personal Leave days that my employer allows, and got the binding done. Currently, it's snowing horizontally.

And so, nearly 44 years after this pattern was published, I've completed my version of it. 

Original Pattern: Maple Leaf Quilt from Scraps, published in Family Circle magazine in March 1977

(My changes from the original pattern included raw edge appliqué using fusible web, rather than needle turn applique, widening the outside borders to 5", and, of course, longarm quilting rather than hand quilting). 

Transform Me

This is one time that I had to pay full price for fabric. I seldom do it, but once in a while a project comes along that I don't have much choice. 
Peter, one of my adult nephews, collects Transformers. As I've likely mentioned before, my goal is to make every sister, niece and nephew and great niece and nephew a quilt. And I like to customize the quilts as much as possible. So, when it came to Peter's quilt, I promised him a Transformers quilt. Originally, I was planning on applique because I hadn't seen any Transformers fabric. Then one day, as I was browsing in a fabric store, I came across Transformers panels and fabric. And this particular fabric store doesn't have much in the way of sales. They do have some clearance fabric and a reduced price on "end of the bolt," but the Transformers fabric wasn't in either of those categories. I bought the panel first, and had it kicking around for at least a couple of months before I finally went back and bought the fabric. The solid red is the only fabric that came from my stash. I came up with the design myself.
Some time ago, I saw a video on Trapunto, which is adding extra batting to certain areas of a quilt to give it more emphasis. I'm really not all that adventurous when it comes to quilting, sticking with my comfort zone, pantographs. But I decided to give Trapunto a try, especially since I have lots of pieces of fibrefil batting kicking around. And that's what the batting of choice is for Trapunto, to give the extra loft. So I added one layer of fibrefil and one layer of cotton batting to the word, "Transformers." 

Honestly, if you're going to try Trapunto, I don't recommend that you start with a word. All of those tiny spaces in the letters that needed to be cut out! Start with a simple shape like a circle. 😁 Well, I did it, and I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. 

In order to make the Trapunto stand out, it's necessary to quilt densely around the object to which the extra batting has been added. Which meant I had to do free motion quilting around the word. Definitely not professional, but I'm still happy with it. 

I used the pantograph, Game Night, to quilt the rest of the quilt. 

It's finally on its way to my nephew. First, I had to get a negative result to my Covid-19 test so that I could end my self-isolation. Then I had to find the right size box. Then I had to have a day off so that I could mail it. Canada Post's hours have been cut back because of the pandemic and they close at the same time that I finish work. So, it was mailed April 20, and I hope he loves it. 

The Nacho Quilt

I'm calling this a nacho quilt, as in "Nacho favourite quilt." At least, it definitely is not mine. (Nacho = not your). It's not bad enough to rank as a Bodley quilt, but it lacks that pizzazz, that zing, that wow factor that I like to see in my quilts. So, I've coined a new term for quilts that fall somewhere between Bodley and Wow: Nacho. 

I was looking for a quilt that I could work up quickly for a friend/work colleague that is going through chemotherapy, and I was hoping for a tulip quilt because this friend is of Dutch lineage. While I definitely feel that the leaves are out of proportion to the flowers, I really didn't dislike this quilt when I saw Jenny Doan's tutorial on YouTube. However, I think even hers is a nacho quilt. If I'd had more time, this definitely would not be my first choice for a tulip quilt. 
Once the quilt top was done, I took it to work to get the team to sign it with messages of hope and encouragement. If you look closely at the above picture, you can see some handwriting on the quilt. 
Then I had to figure out what to do for backing and binding. I was planning on going into the city to find something, but started looking through my stash, and found this. 

And there was enough for a backing! Frankly, I think the backing is prettier than the quilt top.
Mystery assisted with cutting the batting.

Actually, he hindered rather than helped, sitting right on the cutting line.
I would have liked to quilt with a tulip pantograph if I had one. Then I remembered that I had a pantograph with hummingbirds, called Columbines with Hummingbirds, by Deb Geissler. It comes with two borders - one of columbines alone, and one of hummingbirds alone. But with both borders, it made the pantograph so wide that it didn't fit my pantograph shelf. So, I cut it apart, with the 2 borders in one piece and the main pantograph in the other. 

I was a little concerned as to how the hummingbirds would turn out, but was quite pleased. 

And here is one of the columbines.

Now that it's quilted and bound, I'm feeling better about it. Although it is still a nacho quilt. 

Where the Charming Roses Bloom

My local quilt shop cuts bolts of fabric into metres and half-metres and sells them for $7 per metre or $3.50 for a half metre. I assume they are old stock and they're making way for new stock, but it's still perfectly good fabric. And when I'm in need of a "fabric fix," I can pick up one or two of these without exceeding my budget or severely taxing my already burgeoning fabric stash.Sometimes I try to pick out several of the same fabric and sometimes I try to find fabrics that would go well together. That's where I picked up most, if not all, of the fabrics in this quilt. I also picked up the pattern there because my LQS has awesome sales on other things besides fabrics. This is the Trellis Setting pattern by Sharyn Craig. It does not provide actual block patterns, but is a setting pattern for 6", 9" or 12" blocks, plus the corresponding smaller blocks. Or a focus fabric can be used instead of blocks, which is what I did. I wanted a quilt that would work up quickly and it did. It has 9" and 4-1/2" squares of the focus fabric, yielding a 70" square quilt. For a focus fabric, I generally choose something with a pattern that really fills up the space. This was what I had available and doesn't fit what I normally would choose. So, instead, I chose to use it to highlight the quilting. 

Initially, I thought those were strawberry plants trailing through the fabric. Then I noticed the thorns on the stems and realized those were roses. So that indicated the direction that I was going to take this quilt. I chose the Abstract Rose pantograph for the quilting.

With all the points and tips and detail in this pantograph, it is rather labour-intensive. But I think it's also the most beautiful pantograph I've used to date. I've used it once before, in the Chelsea Rose Bargello. I matched the thread to that dusty mauve/rose colour in the inner sashing. 
Coming up with a name for this quilt - I thought of Rose Trellis, but that wasn't quite right. Then I remembered this song that a friend in college used to sing. I always loved it and chose to use the line, "Where the charming roses bloom" as this quilt's name. I felt it was especially appropriate as this quilt is destined for a palliative acquaintance.

This is one of the first quilts I quilted on my HQ Amara,

but getting it finished was challenging. While pressing the third quilt top I intended to quilt on my longarm, I felt a lump underneath my foot. And I was wearing a firm-soled slipper! Feeling beneath my foot to see what the problem was, I discovered I was having major flooring issues in my newly installed flooring. The sewing end of my studio was already jam-packed full of the clutter that had been in the newly renovated quilting end, and had yet to deal with. But my handyman (who happens to be my ex-husband, Allan) managed to condense it even further so that the longarm could be moved into that end. That effectively cut me off from either quilting or sewing, while the flooring was ripped up, the Dricore pulled up and reinstalled with staggered seams, and underlay installed. Then I had to wait because the flooring I had originally ordered was no longer in stock and the factory had to produce more before it could be shipped out. I ended up paying Allan to do the rip out and reinstall because the flooring place was not going to remove and replace the Dricore with staggered seams, which is likely what was causing the problems in the first place. The only thing the flooring place did was reinstall the vinyl because Allan didn't feel comfortable doing that. Suffice it to say that that particular flooring place will not be doing any further work in my house. 
Finally, the flooring was done and the Amara was back in its place, but my sewing room is absolute chaos. I finally assembled the sewing table that came with my new Janome that I bought early this year and have managed to clear a place to sew, so was able to get the binding on this quilt. Unfortunately, I couldn't find the thread that I would have liked to use to finish the binding, but this variegated Aurifil worked well. 

Now I need to get this to the recipient and continue de-cluttering the sewing room. I told Allan that I could probably get one of those shipping containers and fill it with stuff for Value Village. Then my resolution will be to keep my home uncluttered. I don't need to hang onto everything that "might be useful some day."

The Bluenose II Pixel Quilt - Finally Finished

Dear Cindy,

      

       Now that your quilt is finally finished and on its way to you, I decided to tell you its full story.

       Since you love the ocean and your favourite colour was blue (that was before you told me that you now prefer the jewel tones), I decided to make you a quilt with a nautical theme, and I started collecting blue fabrics (which I didn't end up using since they were print and I needed solids for this quilt). There are a number of quilt block names that are related to the ocean, and I figured I would likely pick one of these. But I was letting it percolate in my mind for awhile.
       Meanwhile I enrolled in an online quilting class called Pictures to Pixel Quilts. The quilt for the class was a picture of the instructor's eye. Boring. So I started looking around for ideas. In Microsoft Paint, I pixelated a hydrangea photo that I took at Muttart Conservatory. But I wasn't sure if I wanted to try making a quilt out of that either. It was a pretty tedious job trying to calculate the colours...
       One day I was perusing the latest issue of Canadian History while I was home on my lunch break. It had an article on the Bluenose II, and I had a sudden lightbulb moment. That was it - I would do a pixel quilt of the Bluenose II. Perfect! You love the ocean, you love Canadian history and you live in Nova Scotia - what could be better? I had no idea what I had gotten myself into.
       In the pixel quilt course, we were introduced to Pic 2 Pat, an online website that converts photos into cross-stitch patterns. Then I had to find a decent picture of the Bluenose II, and upload it to the sight. I had to play around quite a bit to get it the right size. Initially, I was going to make the whole quilt a pixelated picture. But I decided that was a little overwhelming and settled on just the bed top. More or less. It was challenging to get the size right and I settled for what would approximately cover the bed top. I also had to determine the number of squares and colours. The more squares and colours, the more detail in the picture, but also the more challenging. And I ended up settling on 1-inch squares and 77 colours.
       The pattern gave the colour requirements in DMC floss. But I was using fabric not floss. So, somehow I had to convert it. I bought a DMC floss colour card and a Kona cotton colour card. Kona is one of the best known lines of solid-coloured fabric in the quilting world.

DMC Floss Colour Card

Unfortunately, the floss card only had pictures of the floss, not actual samples.

Kona Cotton Colour Card

And the Kona card only had 1-inch samples of fabric. That made it very difficult to compare colours. So my buddy, Phil, who works in a sign shop and knows his colours, and I went to Michael's to compare actual floss with the Kona Colour Card. And I duly noted down our selections. I had also picked up some solid blue fabrics in Ontario at the Aylmer Sales Arena, so they too had to fit into the colour scheme. And Michael's didn't have all of the floss colours either, so I had to do my best with comparing the two colour cards. Unfortunately, there are more floss colours than there are fabric colours, so some fabrics had to stand in for more than one floss colour. I ended up with 66 colours, 41 of which were shades of blue. Did you know that there were even that many different shades of blue? Wow!
I have to pause for a minute and give credit to my pal, Phil. How many men do you know that would have that kind of patience? So, you owe some thanks to him for his part in the colour selection.
But the fun had just begun, because I still had to calculate fabric requirements. The pixel part of this quilt is 63" x 72". That means 4,536 one-inch squares. So, I had to count symbols on the pattern to determine how many I needed of each symbol, which would translate into each colour of fabric. Now, of course, on the pattern, these squares were smaller than 1/8". So, I had lots of fun trying to count those miniscule symbols, some of which look very much alike. Then I had to calculate how many 1-1/2" squares (with seam allowance) I could fit into different measurements of fabric. I actually created a spreadsheet in Excel, indicating the DMC colour number and name with the corresponding Kona colour number and name, and the number of squares I would need of each colour. 

Pattern and Excel Spreadsheet

In addition to the fabric I bought in Ontario, I ended up ordering from three different vendors, because no one vendor had all of the colours I needed. I ordered some charm squares (5" squares of fabric, which would yield nine 1-1/2" squares), fat quarters (an 18x22" piece of fabric), half yards and yardage. And when they all finally arrived, I labelled each piece of fabric with the corresponding DMC floss number and arranged them all in numerical order. However, as I progressed through the quilt, it was very difficult to keep them that way, especially the ones that represented more than one floss colour number.
I also had to decide what to do for borders and backing. I found a boat fabric on eBay, but miscalculated somehow and didn't order enough.

Fortunately, it was still available and I ordered the rest of what I needed.
       For the borders, I decided to alternate an underwater fabric with seashells on the sand fabric,

and use a different nautical themed block for each corner. In those, I hoped to add the jewel tones that you like, and bring out some of the colours from the border fabrics.

Lighthouse Tower

Storm At Sea

Sailor's Delight

Ocean Waves

But back to the pixel part of the quilt - rather than do the large areas of the same colour in individual 1" squares, I chose to do it as larger pieces of fabric. Otherwise, you'd probably still be waiting. I realized, however, that when sewing rectangles together that went every which way, the seams didn't always line up and I had to chose to do only one row of squares at a time - not 2 rows by 4 columns or 3 rows by 3 columns. I put the main fabrics I was working with into bins on my cutting table and labelled each bin with the floss number and symbol. I chose to work in mostly 10" blocks. Once I got to the more challenging parts, I decided to draw a couple of 10x10 grids on my design wall (which is just a vinyl flannel-backed tablecloth with the flannel side out) to keep track of which square of fabric went where. I also discovered that I couldn't work on this quilt if I was feeling tired. I had to be mentally alert to keep the colours in order.

The quilt was about 3/4 finished when I decided that I really needed to get the sewing room renovations done. My design wall with the current squares I was working with came down off the wall, and everything was put away wherever I could find room. That ended up being quite a long quilting hiatus. It's very challenging trying to do renovations while working full time, and I finally hired help. Meanwhile Sophia and Damian moved in, and, since Grandma is Damian's favourite playmate, I still didn't get back to your quilt right away. To be perfectly frank, it was tedious and hard to keep motivated.

Last fall, I determined to get back at it and finally finished the quilt top. All that was left was the quilting and binding. Unfortunately, I had that aborted attempt at Central Sewing Machines, where it seemed everything went wrong. My time is limited for when I can get into the Longarm studio to quilt, but over the Christmas/New Year's season, my favourite - but most expensive - quilting studio had a half price sale and I booked 6 hours on the first available date that I had off and they had time available. That was April 7th. And I switched threads. I didn't think the Aurilux thread (on the right) was blue enough - it's more teal/aqua than blue, so I bought a variegated Artistry thread (on the left).

I figured 6 hours would be ample for this quilt, and hoped I might even get a chance to do another, smaller quilt. Ha! Fortunately no one else was booked for the Longarm machine after me as I used a fairly dense quilting pattern (Wave Upon Wave)

and it ended up taking me 7 hours. And my feet were killing me afterwards. But I was so happy to finally have it done. All that was left was the trimming and the binding, which was also lots of "fun" maneuvering all of that bulky, heavy quilt.

And, as I said, it is heavy - the parcel weighed over 3.3 kg. You'll also find it stiff initially, until it's been washed at least once.

Up close, a pixel quilt looks just like a random bunch of squares of different coloured fabric. The farther away you get, the better it looks. That's why I took pictures in the garage (it was snowing/raining so I couldn't take them outside).

Enjoy your quilt. I will likely never make another like it.

With lots of love,

Laura

By the way, I have since found a website that makes actual pixel quilt patterns, and calculates the yardage and colours for you. Oh, how much time I could have saved if YouPatch had been available when I first started designing this quilt!

Other posts about the Bluenose II Pixel Quilt:

Random Quilting Inspiration

Show & Tell: Colour Cards and Pixel Quilts

A Really Late Show & Tell - Comparing DMC Floss to Kona Cotton Colours

Show & Tell: The Week's Progress

Work in Progress: Bluenose II Pixel Quilt - Part 1

Work in Progress: The Bluenose II Pixel Quilt, Part 2

Work in Progress: The Bluenose II Pixel Quilt - Part 3

Work in Progress: The Bluenose II Pixel Quilt - Part 4

A Different Perspective

Work in Progress: The Bluenose II Pixel Quilt - Part 5

Work in Progress: The Bluenose II Pixel Quilt - Part 6

Work in Progress: The Bluenose II Pixel Quilt - Part 7

Show & Tell: Ocean Waves

A Storm at Sea is not a Sailor's Delight

A Sailor's Delight in a Storm at Sea is a Lighthouse Tower

Show & Tell: Jumping Ahead to Borders for the Pixel Quilt

Another Row Finished on the Bluenose II

Thread

Back to Work on the Bluenose II

Pixel Quilt Update and More

So Disappointing

The Bodley Quilt

When my youngest sister, Cindy, was quite small, she received a stuffed corduroy chicken as a gift. She promptly said it was ugly. Later when I asked her what she was going to call it, she said, "Bodley." Or at least that's what I thought she said. What she had actually said was "Ugly." But Bodley it was, and Bodley it remained. 
A couple of years ago, I thought I might make some quilts for the Bags of Love program and purchased a few quilt kits from the clearance section at Keepsake Quilting. However, I have a habit of thinking I can accomplish more than is realistically possible, and life intervened and I never did get involved in this program. Earlier this year, I wanted to start a new quilt and pulled out the Garden Walk quilt kit. The picture had looked reasonably nice online, but when I pulled the fabric out of the package, I thought it looked like it was left over from the late 60s/early 70s. It was cringe-worthy! I'm not a big fan of scrappy quilts, but at least if the fabric is pretty, the quilt might be tolerable. But this was a scrappy quilt using ugly fabric. Am I being too harsh? Well, remember this is just my opinion. And obviously some people must like this kind of fabric or it wouldn't be made. Different strokes for different folks, right? But it definitely isn't my taste. I found it hard to motivate myself to actually work on this quilt. 
As I was working on it, I couldn't help but wonder why it was called Garden Walk. I recognized that the blocks look like tiles that you might use in a walkway, but a walkway is not one big rectangle. I thought maybe it should be called Garden Patio instead. And then I got to thinking how I would make a Garden Walk quilt, using some Stonehenge fabric to make the tiles actually look like they were made from stone and having them meander through the quilt between blocks of floral fabric. Alas I was stuck using Penelope from Camelot Fabrics. And this is not a reflection on Camelot Fabrics, because they have some nice stuff. It's just that I don't particularly care for this fabric line. I kept looking at that "Camelot" on the selvedges and thinking how I should use that in the name of the quilt. King Arthur's Tiles? No, hopefully King Arthur wouldn't have such gaudy pink tiles. I googled because I really didn't know much of the Camelot story and found out that Queen Guinevere had cheated on King Arthur with his most trusted knight, Lancelot, inciting Arthur to go to war with Lancelot, which resulted in Arthur's death. I considered calling this quilt Lancelot's Tiles, but decided that conniving, manipulating adulteress deserved to have them named after her. And so this quilt became Queen Guinevere's Tiles. That's the title I put on the back. But to me it will always be the Bodley Quilt. Because Bodley it is and Bodley it will remain.

Using all of the fabric in the quilt construction, I discovered that I had 5 extra blocks. I used 4 to make a pillow pocket to turn this into a quillow.

And the 5th I used to make a decorative pillow. 

Quillow in the background, decorative pillow in front.

I decided I wanted to emphasize the tile-look of these blocks, and so used stitch in the ditch to outline each rectangle on my domestic machine. Then I followed the design in the fabric to quilt the border. Of course, that took much longer than doing it on the long arm and that meant I had that much longer to look at this quilt. I am so glad to have it finished and given away. This is the only quilt I've ever made that I felt this negative about. Unfortunately, I have at least one more "Bodley" quilt kit in my stash. But I have plans to remedy that one and make it more tolerable. Stay tuned...

Folding a Quillow

When I first "met" a quillow (a quilt that folds into a pillow), I discovered that it was easy enough to get the quilt out, but folding it back up and nesting it inside it's pillow pocket was another matter. Then, when I gifted a quillow, I found the recipient had the same issue.
So here, for present and future recipients are the directions, with pictures, on how to fold up a quillow.
1. Start by laying the quilt face up on the floor or other flat surface of sufficient size, with the pillow pocket face down on the end farthest from you.

2. Fold in each side of the quilt so that the fold lines up with the edge of the pillow pocket.

First one side...

and then the other.

3. Next, start a rolling fold from the end closest to you.

You want the first fold to be slightly smaller than the pillow pocket, as it will increase in bulk with each fold.

It may take 3 or 4 folds depending on the size of the pillow pocket, and the size of the quilt. The second last fold needs to line up with the bottom of the pillow pocket. 

The final fold should land the folded quilt directly on top of the pillow pocket. This can be a little tricky and you may find that you will have to refold to get this to happen. 

4. Reach inside of the pillow pocket and use whatever contortionist tricks you have to, to get the pillow pocket inverted over the quilt. Be cautious with this maneuver as the pillow pocket is only hand stitched on, and too much pressure can cause stitches to break. 

5. And there you go, you now have your quilt folded inside of the pillow. 

The big one is the quillow. The smaller one is just a decorative pillow made from a left over block. 

I originally found the directions on Craftsy from Patz in Suffolk. She also gives some tips on making a quillow. Here's the link: https://www.craftsy.com/quilting/project/how-to-fold-a-quillow/54472