Scotty's Quilt or adventures in a Quilt Kit from eBay

Scotty’s Quilt or Adventures with a Quilt Kit from eBay

This quilt was a 30^th Birthday present for one of my oldest and best friends. I struggled for some time to find a quilt that would be suitable for a male. Whilst looking at fabric on eBay I happened to stumble across this quilt kit and thought that it would be appropriate for anyone.

This quilt was a lot of fun to make and came together very quickly. I highly recommend purchasing a quilt kit when you are well and truly sick of measuring and cutting! In fact I think that every quilter should make themselves try it just once and then you can make up your own minds!

 
I must admit that this is the first quilt where I attempted to sew triangles, and the very thought of that as a relatively new quilter really terrified me. But after doing a little bit of research on Google and in quilting magazines I discovered a way to stop the ends of the triangle bunching up or getting caught in the feed dogs and therefore wrecked. I start every seam now with a little snip of fabric, and since making this quilt I have made that a general practise no matter what I sew now.

I think after cutting up so many rectangles for my own French Braid quilt I really enjoyed the reprieve of not having to do any cutting. I do most of my cutting in front of the TV, but still we all know that even with a rotary cutter there is a fair amount of strain on fingers, wrists and joints...regardless of your age!

Firstly I sewed together the striped squares; there were a total of sixteen coloured squares to be sewn from four quarter triangles.  I then sewed the squares to the black fabric as per the instructions. Then I laid the large strips out on the floor to see how it would look once complete. Next I sewed the strips together to form the centre piece of the quilt. Then there was a strip of striped fabric to be sewn.

At this stage I realised that there was a mistake and that this quilt was nowhere near enough to being what I intended it to be.  (Being a grown man, and wanting all of my quilts to be used, I thought that it was best that I made the quilt a bit larger so he’d be more likely to use it on his bed).

So I took one of the last black strips of fabric from the kit and set off for the quilt shop to try and match it. I also obtained some more striped fabric to make another border, as well as another type of striped fabric to make the binding (which usually isn’t included along with the backing or the wadding in most quilt kits from what I can determine).

I washed the new fabrics separately and waited for them to dry and then cut them to the size that I needed. I then added the extra ‘round’ of the quilt and was happy that it would be a decent size (and also pretty keen to get it into the quilters so that I would have a chance to get it to my friend for his 30^th). I used the services of the same long arm quilter who used a variegated thread in a slightly different style to stippling.

When the quilt came back this time I was all prepared with the binding all made up and ready to be sewn on.

My friend loves his quilt and is in awe of my efforts and I know that it’s something that he will always use!