Pretty Yellow Quilt with Vintage Squares

Well, it took me almost two years, but I just finished this quilt for my sister’s birthday today. She and I went antique shopping one day in late 2011, and I happened to find these squares finished in the Trip Around the World pattern.  I have a weakness for older fabrics, so I bought them, knowing I would love to make a quilt out of them. I didn’t realize until I got them home that there were only 11 squares, not the 12 I thought I had counted. One of the 11 was even different in that it didn’t have a row of pink polka-dotted material.  I thought about it, and decided to use the odd one to make a pillow case out of, so that left me with ten. Here is a picture of the pillow.

After I made the pillow, the squares just sat around until I could decide what to do with them. I loved all the colors, but finally decided on focusing on the yellow.  Unfortunately, another problem I ran into was the blocks were all different sizes.  One was 16 inches, and the others ran anywhere from 17 inches to almost 18.  I went for the middle, and cut all of them to 17 inches, and added a red border to the one that was 16 inches.  Finally, I was left with a nice pile of even squares.

In May, I finally bought the material, and started cutting the blocks. I liked the look of the squares on point, and started laying them out.  This is what I ended up with. You’ll notice I didn’t have a lot of room to work with on the floor, so it’s kind of a bad picture.

And here is the quilt top all sewn together. I had to take into account the two missing pieces, so I decided to leave them out of the middle.  I actually like the way it turned out.

Once the quilt top was put together, I let it sit until July, when I could get back to it. Since the quilt was already on the large size, I decided on one small red border, and one small yellow border, followed by a red binding. The top was officially done.

Unfortunately, the next steps are the ones I like to do least in the quilting process.  That’s why I waited until last Sunday to start on this.  Talk about procrastination. I like to do the top, because it is a bit like putting a puzzle together, and I like seeing the outcome. The actual quilting is just not for me, but I do it anyway. I used a red material for the backing to match the border, and pinned the top and batting to the backing. I then stitched in the ditch, and also stitched a square inside each pink square.

The binding was the last step, and I did cheat a little on this.  I left the backing piece longer than the quilt top on each side, and just folded it over to sew. With this picture, you can see the yellow fabric had a bit of a polka dot effect also.

And here is a picture of the back.  I used yellow thread that matched the fabric, so it really shows up on the back of the red.

I washed it, and was relieved to see the red didn’t bleed into the yellow. I had pre-washed all the fabrics anyway, but it always makes me worry.  Here she is laid out on the bed.  Such a happy quilt:)

Thanks for looking!

Sarah

Linking up with Funky Junk Interiors and Between Naps on the Porch, and A Stroll Thru Life: