Quilt Made with Fabrics from Africa

Double D’s brother lived in Cameroon for a few years. He sent back some fabric a long time ago, before I really decided I would try my hand at putting quilts together. The fabric sat in my drawer from then on.

My brother told me he wanted me to make him a quilt, since I had made one for my mom, and my sister, so I made him one for his birthday.  I decided I wanted something masculine, and finally thought about the African fabric I had been given. This is a really, really rough sketch of how I wanted to use it, but basically, I just settled for basic 5 inch squares cut and then put together to form a diamond for each row of fabric, in a Trip Around the World pattern. You’ll have to forgive my scribbles.

These are the piles of fabric for each pattern.  Double D’s brother had sent three different ones, and two had red in the fabric, so I decided to go with red for the color in between the three different fabrics.

And here they are laid out on the floor.  I really liked how the red made the pieces pop. This is not the best picture, I know.

I then sewed the squares into rows, and ironed the seams.

Next step was sewing the rows together to start forming the quilt top. This step seemed to take forever.  Maybe just because the squares were smaller than normal. 

Once the rows were sewn together, I could then start working on the borders. I had more of the gold fabric than the other two, but I knew I wouldn’t have enough to finish all four of the borders with it.  I decided to go ahead and use it anyway, and finish the missing pieces off with black fabric, since that was the dominant color in all of the fabrics.  I am so glad I did.  I love how the border pieces turned out.

After the borders were attached, it was time to sandwich all the layers together. I used black fabric for the back, and started stitching in the ditch to quilt it.

The quilting part did seem to take forever, but once I got through that, I got the binding pieces done pretty fast.

And here the quilt is on our queen sized bed. I really like how it turned out, and I am so glad I kept the fabric for so many years. This is the first quilt that I have made where I didn’t see any glaring mistakes, and I am pretty happy with my effort overall.  I’m not saying it’s perfect by any means, but I am able to see a progression for the better from some of my earlier attempts:)  My brother seemed to like it too, which is a plus.  I did make the announcement that this is my last quilt I will do for a while, but we’ll have to see how long that lasts:)

Thanks for looking!

Sarah

Linking up with Between Naps on the Porch, A Quilt Story, and A Stroll Thru Life: