My French Braid Quilt

French Braid Quilt

On the way to work one day I stopped at a newsagent to gab myself some 'lunch break reading', it was then that I stumbled across a magazine called Down Under Quilts. Being new to quilting I decided to purchase the mag and fell in love with the quilt on the front cover. Even though I was already in the middle of 'piecing' another quilt for myself I HAD to make this quilt and so the madness began...

This quilt contains 602 rectangles which are then made up into 7 'Braids'. Which means that there are approx 86 rectangles per braid.
I had a lot of fun cutting up all of the fabrics, most of which were purchased from eBay stores in the Charm Pack or Jelly Roll style. In fact I ended up buying too much fabric and had enough left over to make another quilt without having to rush out and buy more to get it started.

In fact I've ended up getting caught in a cutting out rut and ended up with far too many spare rectangles and so have made a couple of cushion covers for a friend in the same style.
While cutting up the fabrics I managed to watch a lot of DVDs once my son had gone to sleep for the night. I even got some strange looks from work mates who were keen to have a knock off drink, but were put off with the excuse that I was desperate to get home and keep on cutting up my fabrics.

I put off completing the binding as I was worried that I'd stuff up the last join of the binding. Now of course I consider myself a bit of a binding pro and feel silly for not finishing the quilt off sooner and being able to use it.

The backing fabric is a beautiful chocolate butterfly vintage style print which was a wide back. I purchased this though the lady who did the long arm quilting for me. I just looked at the website and made my selection and let her know what I wanted. Too easy.
The top of the quilting thread is a combination of brown and tan which melds into the sashing fabric colour, as well as standing out on some of the darker fabrics for a nice effect. The thread used on the back is a dark brown which blends into the backing fabric beautifully.

The quilted pattern is butterflies and leaves with swirling flowers.

For the binding I used a distinctive black and white daisy design.
The batting was also purchased from the long arm quilter as I would have found it difficult to find a batting that would match the quilt for size.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with the quilt that I've made for myself!