Strippy 4 patch

A few years ago, I had purchased a charm square pack - American Primer by Moda - to make up a quilt of my own design.  So I chose a complimentary taupe fabric to use for setting the blocks in.

I drew up some ideas, simple ones such as 4 patches, pinwheels and so forth.  I made the first 4 patch and the edges didn't meet.  Made another one, still not matching.  Ruler out, no, my cutting and quarter inch seam were fine.  Still not matching up and pieces being different sizes.  Turns out the 5in squares were actually 5 x 4-7/8, when I actually thought to measure a 5in square before cutting it!!!  How did I not notice that?

 

OK - deep breath - make all the 4 patches and then trim them to a smaller size, finishing at 3.5in, in the quilt.  Quite a bit smaller than I had originally intended, but easy enough to work with.

Trimmings!!

But then after the frustration of the 5in squares not being 5in square, followed by the trimming, I ended up with such lovely neat and very cute little blocks.

All neatly trimmed and ready to chain piece the setting triangles to the blocks.  Ahhh.... bliss.....

Given how much I love strip quilts, it was an easy leap to set the 4-patch blocks on point and set them with taupe triangles, even if the cutting did have to be a little bit fussy to make the pinstripe run up and down the quilt.

A nice large piece of gorgeous Japanese border type print, which was fussy cut along the printing lines to make up the alternate strips.

Detail showing the Japanese woven fabric panels (before quilting).

The backing uses a remaining piece of stripe plus this gorgeous Toile scene type print.  

Detail showing the quilting.

Each panel was quilted according the pattern in each strip.

I decided to turn it into a coverlet, which is an old style where the wadding is left out, but it is still quilted and bound to make a light weight summer quilt.  This was a challenge because the fabric needed a good hot steam press after quilting to get rid of the ripples caused by quilting only 2 layers.

A piece of red, leftover from my son's quilt last year was just enough to make the binding for this one and it was the perfect shade of red!  When sewing the binding down, it was sometimes difficult to get the thread just in between the two layers of fabric.

And finally, here it is, hanging at the Victorian Quilters Showase in July in the Coverlets category.....

......  No, I didn't win a prize for this one, but that's okay because I am very pleased with how my coverlet turned out AND... I learnt some new skills with regards to how fabric and thread behave when you quilt without wadding.

Sometimes all you need is serendipity and time to make something you love.