Made Up Initiative - My Finished Quilt

It has taken me over two years to make this quilt, and it is simply because I did not have a sufficient reason to finish it - other than I wanted it! - that would make it take precedence over any garment sewing I was doing, until Karen's Made Up Initiative came along and spurred me on to the finish!  

I originally started this quilt as a bit of a reaction to making a few new baby quilts for other people and I suddenly realised that I wanted a quilt too!  There was one that was particularly difficult to give away which is a very similar design (below).  I still love that quilt!  

When I ordered the fabric for it from The Village Haberdashery (in March 2013!!) Annie was running a free fat quarter week and I received two free fat quarters (the ones in the picture below) with my order.  As soon as I saw them I decided to use them as the base for my own quilt.

In that quilt I used Quilter's Linen in Grey as the background colour and liked it so much I decided to stick with it.  I have reordered a few times over the years and there is a slight colour change in the different batches but honestly a) it is more noticeable outside than inside b) I am not bothered by it c) by the time I've spilt food/hot chocolate/wine on it a few times it won't show!  The other fabrics in the quilt include an Art Gallery Fabrics design and a Cloud 9 collection called Grey Abbey.   I think they all coordinate really well together and I am really pleased with the colours - amazing really when two of the fabrics were not chosen by me!

For the backing I pieced together a few bits of fabric to fit.  The main piece is some fabric I won in a giveaway hosted by Handmade Jane (courtesy of Trixie Lixie) last November!  Originally I said I would make cushions with the fabric as it was in my mind that I would need new sofa cushions to match the quilt that would be sat on it.  However when I was making the quilt top I made it a bit longer than it suited so I have two zig zags all pieced together ready to be cushions which left the lovely duck egg free to become my quilt back.  I used leftover strips for the binding which are randomly put together (note to self for any future quilting: make the binding 7cm wide not 6cm!).

I didn't use a pattern for this quilt (which would have been helpful to get the quantities right at the beginning and not keep topping up) but I did find a tutorial for making four half square triangles at once but sadly I can't find the one I used now - there are plenty out there though!  This involves cutting two squares of fabric, placing right sides together, sewing around the outside of the squares then cutting diagonally from corner to corner in both directions which results in 4 half square triangles which just need a bit of trimming and pressing.  Easy peasy!  I have plans to use this method again for my next quilt (seriously, I've started buying the fabric and everything!) but randomly placing the triangles. We'll see, I probably won't get round to it for another few years so I'll have changed my mind at least three times by then!

Right now, I am super happy with my new quilt and I know it probably would have lingered on for another few months had it not been for Karen's initiative.  As of this morning she had raised over £2500 for the National Literacy Trust which is an amazing achievement.  Thank you Karen for forcing me to finish my quilt and for raising money for such a worthy cause at the same time!