I’ve been a busy bee over the last couple of weeks with walking, gardening and of course sewing! I managed to make a quilt in just over a week. About three years ago I promised my niece’s son a bed size quilt to replace the cot quilt I made when he was born. I was planning to make a train themed quilt as he was very into trains, even found an amazing pattern which wasn’t too childish. Time went by and last year Marvel characters took over from trains, especially spiderman.

I looked at the quilt panels with spiderman on, but they were only for sale in USA, I bought a few fat quarters at the local shop and kept my eye open for a centre panel. By chance I saw on Ebay an M&S duvet set with Spiderman on, still in it’s packet, for about £25. As it was M&S I felt the fabric would be a decent quality so I bought it. It turned out it was percale cotton, so it feels smoother than the usual quilting fabric, it feels nice.

My original plan was to have 6″ squares around the panel. I cut the panel next to the seam line, squared it off, it was exactly 54″…and of course I needed 54.5″ to have the 6″ squares around. I decided it was too complicated to work out the size of squares I would need, so I cut them all in half to make strips. I think it actually works better as it looks a bit like a cartoon strip round the edge. So the top didn’t take long at all.

I could have used the back of the duvet cover to back the quilt but it was a white background with Spiderman on. Not only did I think it would be impractical for a child’s quilt, it would also show every dodgy bit of quilting. I bought some splodgy navy blue fabric instead which worked really well…and covers a multitude of sins!

I quilted the figure first using a free motion quilting foot, just following the lines of the design with a couple of extra ones where I felt the gap was to big. I then changed to the walking foot to follow the lines of the web. I added a few extra lines where I felt it was needed.

The label on the back came from the trimmings of the duvet front as did the binding. I just added my initials and the date to the label.

Mum came round to collect it yesterday and today I received a video of him with the quilt saying thank you, he loves it.