bff | threadonthread

Laura’s name has come up in a previous post – The Girlfriend Quilt . You’ll also find her, and her husband Greg, in the blog that I kept while we travelled through India in 2013 –https://samosasojourn.wordpress.com We met at Willows Elementary School in Victoria in September, 1969, and have been great friends since then.

Last year I offered to make a quilt as a housewarming gift for Greg and Laura’s new home on Shawnigan Lake. We looked at many different quilts on Pinterest, in books and in magazines. Finally, we found a photo of a quilt, by Zen Chic, on Pinterest – lots of bright coloured dots on a white background.

The background is a solid white cotton that I purchased at Fabricana. I pieced it to make it queen-sized. The dots were a multi-step process. First, we chose fabric in colours that reminded us of our trip to India. Many of these fabrics were remnants from “Delhi Dreams” Start To Finish #6 – Done! Then, I cut the dots in three different sizes, using plates and bowls as my templates! The dots were sewn, right sides together, to fusible interfacing. I cut a small slit in the interfacing and turned the dots so that they were right sides out and fused them to the white background. Each dot was then edge stitched to ensure that they would stay attached. Then, to cut down on bulk, I cut away any excess fabric from behind each dot.

The back of the quilt is the same white fabric as the front, with just a few dots. The batting is bamboo. I quilted this on my Husqvarna domestic machine using Superior King Tut thread in ‘Temple’. It’s a meandering pattern that was fun to do and looks great with the dots.

We originally wanted to use white for the binding, but decided that it needed some contrast, so I chose an orange/yellow/gold fabric that sets the quilt off well. The binding is attached by machine to the quilt front then pressed and folded over towards the back. Normally, I would hand stitch the binding, but the 400″ perimeter seemed daunting, so I finished it by machine.

The final step was to choose a name and make/attach a label. I enlisted Laura’s help and we came up with all kinds of silly possibilities. In the end, and as a joke, Laura suggested “Laura’s Quilt”. Seemed perfect to me!