Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Wedding Quilt and Bedskirt

I have a personal rule for internet equanimity: don't read the comments. If I want to continue happily about my day I do not want to know what the random strangers on the internet think, it's why I rarely solicit comments on my blog (even though I know inviting discussion helps grow readership), because in my experience, usually, random strangers are cruel. A wonderful exception to that rule is ravelry.com where I participate in the Sew Obsessed forum. That is a wonderful group of people who always make me feel so good about my projects.

My most recently compleated project is a queen size quilt. I'm not really much of a quilter and I was feeling a little self-conscious about some of the mistakes on my quilt, so I wasn't sure I wanted to post it, but I did. I prefaced it by saying is was only mediocre and I've received nothing but positivity and support about it. People said things like I must use a different definition of mediocre then them and that there never was a quilt made with perfectly straight lines. Thanks to the support of random internet strangers I am feeling much happier with my finished object so I wanted to share it with you also. I wish the rest of the internet was as pleasant as that group.


When I got married my goal was to make as much that was reusable as possible and to spend as little money as I could get away with (I'm pleased with my success on both counts). One of the ways I did that was making bunting to hang from the ceiling of my venue. 


All of the fabric used in that bunting came from my grandmother, my mom, my mother-in-law or my own stash of fabric. That alone gives me a glowy, happy, peaceful feeling. I thought the bunting was a sweet touch and a nice way to bring in some color and it didn't take too long to make, all things considered. And when I was done with it all that fabric became the triangles in my quilt. Now being wrapped in that quilt is like getting a warm hug from all the crafty women in my family.

Like I said, I'm not really much of a quilter. I've never attempted anything that big before, but I pieced the top together, sandwiched batting between it and a giant piece of white cotton, slapped the walking foot on my machine and I stitched about 1/4" away from each seam on the triangles in nice long diagonal lines. 

I really like the pattern that the quilting made on the backing too. 


I know white on white is hard to see, but it makes a cute little Star of David. 

I used a bright white 100% cotton batting. I like cotton for batting because it's still thin, but it has more weight to it than poly or blends. I like a quilt to be a bit heavy, but not too stiff. I stuck to minimal quilting partly because it was less intimidating and partly because the less you quilt it the less stiff the finished quilt it. This particular batting only had to be quilted every 10" so my 6.5" triangles fit the bill just fine. 

The other fabric you may have noticed in the shot of my venue was the burlap runners on all the tables. 

I was going to just use burlap table clothes, but Husband was convinced that it would be scratchy. I kept saying no one was going to be rolling naked on the tables, but he was adamant. Fortunatly, my mother-in-law had white table cloths so I bought 20 yds of burlap and cut it in half and hemmed it to make table runners instead. At the time I was grumbling about the extra work but now I'm happy about it because the tables looked cute and the runners were easy to reuse. I turned them into a bed skirt.


The finished length of my table runners was 2.5 yds and I used 8 of them (so 20 yds of fabric, but the yardage is cut in half, you would need to buy 10 yds of burlap to replicate this). I sewed them to the remains of an old fitted sheet I got from my mom. I didn't want the pleats to look too even and mechanical so I just did them randomly by hand as I was feeding the fabric through the machine. Since I had already hemmed the fabric it only took about 2 hours to finish this project. 


And I think it looks great with the quilt. Now the bed just needs like 6 or 8 more pillows (I love pillows, Husband thinks they are stupid, but I think he is going to lose this battle) and a headboard and it will be perfect! When Husband and I first started dating more than 6 years ago I made him buy a mattress but I bought the sheets and comforter. We've had the same one since then and I am totally sick of it now. I'm really glad that I was able to repurpose wedding items into a nice update for our bedroom decor. The comforter is still under there, the quilt isn't warm enough for winter all on its own, but at least I don't have to look at it anymore and I've still got some burlap left, so I might make it into pillows, or curtains, or something, I'm not sure yet, but for the moment I am pleased. 

1 comment:

  1. First thought upon seeing the quilt, "ooh pretty." Love it even more once I read about your quilt and bed skirt source materials. They both turned out great.

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