Thrifty and easy square patch quilt

Floral patch quilt – using the reverse side of fabrics to get more tones

I love this quilt. I hand-sewed the squares together in nine-patch blocks (much quicker than I thought it would be or I was in the speedy gonzalez zone).

Then laid the patches out to see what the ‘whole’ would look like. It’s hand-sewn together and then hand-quilted – ditch-stitch – with bubblegum pink embroidery floss. I’m lucky – one of my work colleague’s husband’s is a hoarder who for some uknown reason had hoarded a big bag full of embroidery floss in every shade of the rainbow. It’s about 30 years old but it’s keeping me busy!)

The quilt is not 100% finished, but my boy kept grabbing it last night to snuggle under and there were still pins in it, so I hastily finished it so there is no danger of him stabbing himself in the meantime until it is properly complete!

Thrifty Aspect 

The red squares were hand-me-down fabrics. Whatever colour was there is what I used. I took swatches to the store so I could get matching light tones. Again, I wasn’t fussy, whatever was in the bargain section got the once-over.

I used both sides of the red fabric to get slightly different tones.

The white-tones I bought, but the pretty backing happened to be $1 a metre at Spotlight. OMG. That made me so happy. It’s called ‘Japanese Lawn’ and it’s multicoloured floral on white. So it’s got a bit of blue, orange, green, red, yellow and pink. Which is perfect for tying the colours together.

I also couldn’t afford to buy batting and didn’t have enough in my Tardis craft cupboard for a quilt this size, so I googled alternatives – what did they do in the olden days – and somewhere it said, ‘use a bed sheet’. As it happened, I had a baby-crib size flat-sheet that was exactly the right size.

Quilting as Therapy

The thing I love about this quilt more than anything is the feeling of a crisp, cotton bedsheet, folded down over the duvet like my Grandmother Heather used to do. Oh, it feels so cozy. It’s very light. It’s a sort of summer weight I guess. But it feels heavenly and is why I’ve called it Grandma’s Garden. Even though my Grandmother disliked gardening, lacked a green thumb and preferred cacti and rocks! It’s a heritage quilt because of my feeling about it. And that is an aspect that I rather like.

I love that some thrifty aspect of this project feels better than if I’d planned it that way.

It happened that before I made the quilt, I made some bunting with the red fabric (I didn’t have any pale material at all) and so it just seems serendipitous that it’s pretty as a picture.