Louisa Enright's Blog

Turkey Tracks:  July 20, 2018

“Cool” Selvage Quilt Finished

Summer is a busy, busy family and garden time for me.  So I have not posted to the blog as a result.

Still, I have had some time to sew.

I finished the selvage quilt I’ve worked on off and on for about a year.  I chose the “cool” colors–and love this quilt so much that I will make it again in the “warm” colored selvages I have collected.  I have LOTS of those now.  I might make it a bit bigger too since I like it so much.  Who knows.

I enlarged the block size from Amy Friend’s “Circuitry” quilt, found in her INTENT

IONAL PIECING.  And I used patterned fabrics around the selvage parts of the block rather than more subtle fabrics.

I quilted with a light grey t40-weight hread (Signature) and tried the McTavishing style of quilting.  I was really, really not sure I would like McTavishing as I spent four nights drawing on paper to try to get the scale bigger than one might do on a domestic machine.  I have to say that I really love the texture.  As I went along, I got more proficient AND I got braver about filling in open spaces.  I can’t wait to McTavish again.

I chose this Cotton+Steel fabric for the backing because I’ve always loved it and got a really good price for it on Amazon, via fabric.com.  This fabric is an older one, so I was lucky to find it.  And I figured any problems I created with the quilting would not show so much on the back.

My intent was to make this quilt a functional, washable quilt for, maybe my bedroom, where Penny tends to lick herself and leave spots.  But, for the moment, here it is:

You can see along the bottom where my McTavishing was more tentative, leaving lots of space.

Can’t wait to make “Warm.”