Earlier this year, I had the pleasure of working with Amber Elliot of Alderwood Studio to tech edit the patterns and quilting instructions in her first book. After many additional months of prep, Modern Heirloom Quilting: 12 Quilt Patterns for a Contemporary Home is available starting today!
Amber is hosting a blog hop to celebrate, and I offered to make one of the small projects you’ll find in the book — the Full Moon quilt. This can be turned into a mini quilt or a pillow, and instructions for both options are included. I have plenty of mini quilts already, so I chose the pillow option and it turned out great!
I used two Ruby Star Society prints — Grid and Speckled. Both have metallic accents which worked well with the moon-inspired design. The half-circles are on the small side, so if you are looking through the book and haven’t sewn a lot of curves before, it may make sense to take on a project with larger curves before you tackle this one. But as long as you pin/glue baste the seam and sew slowly, the curved piecing turns out just fine.
The sample shown in Amber’s book is hand quilted, but I chose to machine quilt this piece on my domestic machine. I knew I wanted to quilt it fairly densely, but I didn’t want the quilting lines to overwhelm the simplicity of the design, so I decided to try quilting with Aurifil 80wt thread! I had only quilted with this thin weight once before (to secure the raw edge fused letters on my Mars quilt) but it worked well. I took the recommendation on Aurifil’s site to use a size 70 needle and 80wt thread in the bobbin as well, and after fiddling with my tension dial just a bit, I was able to get nice results.
I finished the pillow with a simple envelope closure, and chose not to add any binding since I liked the way it looked just like this. I completed this project around 11:30 on evening, so I put the pillow on the couch and wondered how long it would take my girls to notice it the next morning. Unsurprisingly, they noticed right away — the first thing Charlotte asked me was “Mom, there is a new pillow on the couch, did you make it?” Ha!
This was a fun and satisfying little project, and there are plenty of other pillow and full size quilt patterns in Amber’s book. Head on over to her site to pick up your own copy of Modern Heirloom Quilting!
The stats:
- Measures ~16″ x 24″.
- Fabrics are Speckled in Metallic Black and Grid in Metallic Copper, both by Ruby Star Society.
- Silk batting of unknown brand/origin.
- Quilted with Aurifil 80 wt thread in #2930 (Golden Toast).
Emily Wakefield says
Nice! Once again I am impressed with your precision.
Yvonne @Quilting Jetgirl says
The 80wt thread color you chose compliments those metallic sparkles beautifully. I love that your family noticed the new pillow right away. 🙂