King size | made by a brunnette

In early April, I mentioned I was about to start on my first Swoon quilt, a good two years later than most of the quilters I know (I’m always late to the party… but I don’t like making the same thing as everyone else, either). Anyhoo, I started this at a retreat on April 10th — intended as a wedding gift for my oldest stepdaughter, who was getting married May 9th (yes, 2015).

Guess what? I gifted them a FINISHED King-size quilt last weekend! This photo is as close as I could come to a full shot:

The pattern only makes an 80″ square quilt, so I made 16 blocks (instead of the 9 the pattern calls for) and my quilt finished at 105″ square. FULL DISCLOSURE: I did not quilt it myself, the reason it was done in time for the wedding is because my long-arm quilter is awesome and turned it around quickly.

My stepdaughter requested her wedding colors, navy-cream-metallic gold, I had very little navy in my stash (other than prints with other colors in it) so I went shopping for most of these. The centers of the blocks are either the gold birds by Violet Craft (from her Brambleberry Ridge line) or Indigo Natured Dots from Wilmington fabrics. The background is a Cotton & Steel solid, Kerchief. I used three different metallic gold prints for the star points, one by Carolyn Friedlander and two Asian prints. The navys include three Cotton & Steel prints, and some civil war reproduction and navy/white prints by Windham, Michael Miller, RJR and Red Rooster fabrics.The backing fabric is a Dear Stella chevron, with Cotton & Steel Mustang Arrows and Saltines running lengthwise:

The quilting is a computerized design called “Alex”:

It turned out beautifully. It happens to be the first King size quilt I’ve made (the one on my bed was my largest quilt to date and I think it measures 98″ square), and it might be the last. It took many hours to piece these blocks, but by the time you have the top together, that is a lot of fabric and weight to maneuver around the sewing machine table. Not to mention getting the binding sewn on after it is quilted. However, I know this quilt will be appreciated, they both value handcrafted gifts.