Tag: king size quilt

When Calls the Heart Quilt

A while back my aunt commissioned a quilt, and I’ve been working on it in between t-shirt quilts. Funny enough, everyone staying home has led to a lot of people getting around to overdue projects – including getting their shirts made into t-shirt quilts. So for me, the pandemic led to a slight increase in commissions.

As of this morning, I was able to finish the top. I still need to buy the backing this afternoon. It’s mostly red and white fabric, so that rightfully terrifies me as red fabric is notorious for bleeding dye. All the fabrics have been pre-washed, but I’m still somewhat holding my breath. I’ll be using the some of the Retayne dye-set to help ensure no surprises from the red fabric.

The challenge with this quilt was translating the pattern from a single image from the show When Calls the Heart. It’s a Hallmark show, and the quilt comes up in season 5. I’m honestly really surprised the quilting community hasn’t already jumped on this. From what I can tell, it’s applique hearts, lap-sized, and a tie quilt. For longevity purposes, I’ll be quilting it closely instead of tying it. The original image shows 12 blocks that look to be about 15″x 15″ with a 2″ sashing around each. To make this quilt into a king size, I kept the original block size but made the sashing 3″. I increased the amount of blocks from 12 to 25.

So all that’s left now is to get the backing and quilt it. It looks like it has fold over binding which is great because that’s my normal binding style.

Kayak Quilt

This was a special commission for a dad as a Father’s Day present/late anniversary gift. The couple met while kayaking, and she wanted to give him something special in honor of that first meeting.

Funny enough, there isn’t a whole lot of kayak in this kayak quilt. I found a picture of a canoe going down river, and I really liked the first person perspective. And they met in the spring, so I decided to use greens to make the hill foliage instead of autumn colors.

The water was a neat task, and I knew I wanted to make it unique and have a cohesive-yet-scrappy effect. Using two different shades of navy blue and adding in lighter accent blues, I was going for a watery movement effect, and I gave it an overall unity with a horizontal quilting pattern.

The hills are an element I am particularly proud of. I mused a while over how to approach them. In the end, much like the water, I just dug in and started cutting and let them lead me where they may. When it came to quilting them, I decided to do a different quilting style depending on which shade of green I was on. I even tried to create an evergreen effect for the darker greens.

They weren’t quilted yet when this picture was taken.

The kayak element at first was nothing but a red triangle, and I added an inner line and black strap to help create the look found with most kayaks.

Overall, I am very proud of this one, and I know it’s going to a home where it will be loved. This client and I have worked together on commissions before, and she is fantastic at getting me to try new styles!

The completed work!
The unfinished top – known in the quilting world as a “flimsy.”
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