Well, this has to be the fastest quilt ever made (by me).
On Good Friday my eldest daughter came into our bedroom with the dolly quilt asking ‘who’s is this quilt’ to which she got the response that it is Leah’s and I’d made it for her birthday last year. At that point she had a little strop – ‘it’s not fair I don’t have one’ etc, it seems to be a well used phrase in our house at the moment but on this occasion I resisted the temptation to say “life’s not fair’ and asked her if she would like to make her own dolly quilt.
Thankfully she was quite taken with the idea, we decided on the size of patch we would go for 6cm x 6cm and I cut her a template. She and I got out a bag of scraps and she pulled out all the pieces of fabric she wanted to use, checking them against her template to make sure they would be big enough. I cut the squares out for her, ironing them as we went and she put them into piles of 10 patches (see a bit of a maths lesson at the same time!). When I made the original dolly quilt from squares there were some left so we used those too. We needed 10 piles of 10 and 1 pile of 6 and surprisingly it didn’t take too long.
She then spent a while laying out all the patches with very little interference guidance from me, I just suggested that she might want to spread colours out and put big prints next to small ones. Anyway I think she did a great job, we discovered too late that the table was a bit too small! Which is why the pieces are a bit squidgged together in the above photo. Each piece is different which was also a bit of an exercise in attention and concentration!
I spend the evening sewing the patches into rows and the next evening the rows together, I think on Saturday morning Bethan had asked if it was finished yet! Once stitched together it was neglected for a few days, knowing that I needed to get some wadding and that I would also need to buy wadding for the WIP handkerchief quilt and might have off cuts from that I could use. However I decided to pop into the local sewing shop and they had a piece of roll end for a few pounds which was more than big enough for what I needed, I also bought some binding to save myself time. That afternoon I pulled out a piece of grey/blue fabric and made a quilt sandwich (on reflection maybe I should have washed the wadding first as it’s a natural fibre and might shrink – oh well dolly’s not going to care is she?). Thursday evening was spend quilting in the same way as the other dolly quilt, straight lines, 5mm or so from the edge of each patch vertical and horizontal.
I love this shot of the quilting (thanks T)
Bias binding machine stitched on one side and then the hand sewing to do, which I did on Saturday night and Bethan was presented with the finished quilt on Sunday morning!
So, 9 days from start to finish – pretty impressive in my opinion!
Tobi and I call it the Vomit quilt, Bethan gets cross and says that it’s not, so we will try not to call it that in front of her! The idea for the name came from this post by Katy, she sew beautifully amazing quilts.
I love it! Spontaneious sewing is always the best and most productive and dolly is very lucky x
Thanks Emily, I think you’re right, only problem is having time to be spontaneous!
I too have been making a dolly quilt (duvet really) this week but it’s not nearly as lovely as yours, mine was only made from one piece of fabric. I’m so jealous of your quilting skills, wish I could do it but I just can’t get my head round it. 🙁
Come on tell me what you’re sticking point is – I’d love to help…not now though I must go to bed!
Mx