Over the summer I decided to make bed quilts for my granddaughters, my original plan was to make them in time to give them for Christmas, it rapidly became apparent that even for me this timescale was being somewhat unrealistic! I decided to give them for birthday’s instead, which meant I only had to have one of them ready for Christmas (her birthday is New Year’s Day)

Colourwise Pip is a neutrals girl, not that easy to do in quilts as most have a little something to make them ‘pop’. I found a pattern on pinterest by Wendy Sheppard of Ivory Springs, it’s called Making Friends and I thought colourwise it was perfect.It’s all soft creamy golds and silvery greys.

The pattern was published in the Quilting Quickly magazine back in 2016 and it’s on the Quilting Daily website. The original quilt is a wall hanging about 32″ by 40″, so I knew I would have to upsize it, however I was happy to buy the pattern for the proportions and the instructions. Unfortunately when I tried to buy it it seems you can only buy the patterns if you subscribe to the magasine! I ended up watching the video on how to make it and working out the measurements from that, I didn’t like doing that as I do think if a designer has gone to the effort of writing a pattern it’s only fair to buy it…but I didn’t want to subscribe!

The original pattern used 5″ squares as the original block. I wanted the quilt to be throw size so after lots of calculations on the size of squares on point, I cut 8″ squares to make 7.5″ half square triangle blocks. I made lots of half square triangles, some of which got abandoned pretty early on. I’ve got a bit of a heart theme with fabrics and I have a lovely old gold fabric with ‘threaded with love’ printed on it, but it was too dark. I also got the white version of a hearts one I have used in pale gold, silver and and copper colourways, but that was too white against the warm white I used for sashing. This was my first layout…

I’d rearranged the blocks a little from the original pattern and although I liked the overall effect I wasn’t happy with the middle. The middle blocks are meant to use fabrics that combine silver and gold, Whilst the flowery one perfectly matches colourwise, it just didn’t look right. The original used a plaid too but I couldn’t find one at the Knit and Stitch Show. I ordered a couple on line but when they arrived they were a lovely shade of grey, but too white. I then hit on the idea of dyeing the plaid, I tried my silk paints first but I couldn’t get the right shade. I then decided to try my Inktense pencils…

I’ve been doing an on-line course on using Inktense pencils by Laura of Sew Nature. It’s been really helpful, teaching us different techniques with these watercolour pencils. One lesson was how to do backgrounds, she taught us to use a pencil sharpener to shave off bits of colour. I had a play on some spare fabric and managed to get a good colour match on the plaid, it’s not perfectly even but I’m happy with it. Interestingly I also tried colouring a grey check which looked a similar colour, but that came out too dark. Once dry it should be colourfast.

Layout two with the sashing half done…

I started sewing the rows of blocks together, the quilt was over half made. I still wasn’t 100% happy with the golds but having exhausted my supply I decided it would do. Whilst I was doing a brief tidy-up I found a fat quarter that I’d bought at the Knitting and Stitching show, it was left at the bottom of my shopping bag, forgotten about. It was a lighter softer shade of gold. I decided to change the darker gold blocks (with little dots on) for the lighter one. I spent an evening with my seam ripper removing the six offending blocks and replaced them the next day.

I trimmed the quilt and added a narrow pale gold border and a wider white one and the quilt top was finished. Here it is all neatly sandwiched on the floor…

I started quilting it yesterday so hopefully it will be all finished soon…I still want to make some more clothes for our holiday and we go in two weeks time!