This post is written by Jenelle Clark of Echinops & Aster.
Hi, it’s Jenelle and today I’m sharing my latest quilt finish, plus a quick how-to. I just completed sewing a super-soft, appliqué baby quilt that has lots of little folk details woven into the design.
I wanted to make a unique fall quilt that captured the magic and richness of the changing season. For me, October has always felt full of anticipation and excitement. As fall becomes fully arrived, I start looking forward to all the holidays that mark the latter part of the year. I especially love counting down the days to the last night of October, Halloween. The magic, otherworldly quality of that holiday coupled with my love for traditional, European fairy tales (like those by the Grimm Brothers and Hans Christian Anderson) inspired me to create a quilt that is equal parts folk charm and dark mystery.
It also helps that I’ve had lots of Netflix inspiration lately watching episodes of “Once Upon a Time” and “Grimm”. The sets, costumes, and moods of both those TV shows are a perfect encapsulation of a modern take on the darker side of the fairy tale. That’s exactly the kind of quilt I was aiming for. :)
Speaking of the darker side, the base fabric I chose for my quilt is a lovely Nani Iro Double Gauze in the print Pocho. The dark blue coupled with the silvery polka dots was the perfect option for my dark fairy tale/folksy design. It reminds me of the night sky and it’s also pretty much the softest, most luxurious fabric you could select for a quilt.
To round out the quilt, I also used a couple different chambrays from Robert Kaufman (you can read more about chambray here), including some interweaves, as well as a cotton lawn from Yuwa. All of these fabrics have an incredibly soft hand, and even though some may be more likely be used to make clothing, I found that they quilted beautifully, without any puckers or shifting. The result is a quilt with a soft drape and feel, even with dense quilting.
I thought that I might share a quick how-to for making whole-cloth appliqué quilts like mine—sort of like a flexible formula with plenty of room for personalization. Unlike with most traditional pieced quilt projects, this quilt began with a quilt sandwich. I started by carefully squaring up the piece of double gauze I intended for the quilt top, trimming only slightly to keep as much of the 43 inch width and 36 inch length of the fabric as possible.
I then used a 56 inch wide chambray as my backing, trimming it to be 2 inches larger on all four sides than the double gauze. Next I cut my crib-sized batting to the same size as the backing, sandwiched the batting between the top piece and the backing fabric, and finally used spray baste and a few safety pins to hold it all together. Pretty easy!
I used English Paper Piecing (EPP) to make the floral appliqués on this quilt. If you’d like a breakdown of that technique, I put together a beginner’s tutorial on EPP, which you can find here. I also have the same templates I created for my project for you to download and use for your own project. All you need is a printer, some sturdy paper, and a pair of sharp scissors. You can find those here:
- 1 inch hexies (click here to download template)
- flower medallion (click here to download template)
For my quilt design, I decided to make hexie rings with a central flower medallion. I hand stitched each floral unit individually, before positioning them as a complete group on the top of the whole cloth quilt sandwich. I recommend auditioning a few different design configurations before choosing the final layout.
Once you have the final layout of the appliqué pieces and everything is evenly spaced (if that’s what you’re going for), take a few photos and measurements to help keep track of where you’ll place each piece later. You may even want to outline them with a removable marking tool for extra security. For my concentric design, I also measured and marked the center of the top of the quilt to help me position the center of the flower medallion correctly.
Once the center medallion was in place, I carefully marked the edge of where it lay on the quilt top with some chalk in just a few places before removing the medallion to prep for glue basting. I simply flipped the medallion over to the wrong side, applied glue sparingly to the outer edge, and repositioned it on the quilt using my chalk guides. After pressing it lightly with the iron, the glue heat-set, making the medallion ready for machine appliqué.
You may decide to glue baste each unit separately or to do the whole grouping at once, it’s up to you and how you like to work. I decided to baste each unit one at a time and sew them as I went. I sewed as close to the edge as possible around the outsides and insides of each unit to secure them in place. I later came back in to add more stitching on top of the floral appliqués to add visual interest as well as secure them more fully.
The quilting design then grew organically around the machine appliquéd pieces. I continued to echo quilt around each appliquéd piece using a light blue thread color. I grew this design outward from each shape until the quilting lines of each floral unit came together. I then filled all the open spaces around the geometric quilting with vines and leaves, quilted in gold thread, to give in more of an organic feel and to bring a greater sense of folk charm into the quilting design. I felt that the simple appliqué design on whole cloth needed more defined and robust quilting to give it greater interest and movement. In the end, the quilting really ties the whole design together I think.
I hope that this project and brief how-to will inspire you to create your own whole-cloth appliquéd quilt and perhaps try out some different fabric substrates for your next project!
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