This is an entirely selfish quilt! It was made for my newly decorated bedroom and replaced  a very tatty bed runner that was made by me years ago  from spare curtain material and used an old blanket as wadding. This was before I started quilting proper. It looked okay but of course the cats’ claws have been working on it and pulling threads so a new one was needed. After all everyone else in the house, including the two cats, have their own quilts.

The Quick Curve Ruler (QCR) made by Sew Kind of Wonderful, has been one of those rulers I bought ages ago and it has just been gathering dust.  I doubt very much if I’m the only one who does that! But I had bought the Urban Candy pattern at the same time having  seen quilts on line in this design which appealed to me. My main requirement was for a large, warm and cosy quilt that had rich warm colours, plenty of contrast and frankly not too much work.

I’d been much influenced by the very scrappy nature of a quilt for which I’d been Mama Bee for the charity Siblings Together.  The blocks contained over 50 fabrics, many of which, if I’m honest, were not that attractive but together, what a quilt.  The scrappiness gave it a depth and level of interest  that I wanted to try and recreate. So I pulled all the fabrics in warm tones I had, eliminated some because they were too samey or I truly didn’t feel they fitted, then did a bit of shopping….I was particularly keen to get some Denyse Schmidt fabrics in her older Franklin and Katie Rope Jump fabric ranges which had the blend of colours and scale I was after.  In the end I had this collection, not quite 50, but over 25 as a few more might have snooked in…. For the background, given the fact all the warm fabrics were prints, I went for a plain off white, Kona Oyster to be precise, to go with the very neutral tone of my room.

In fact the QCR lived up to its name because you really do cut those curved pieces very quickly. I have heard of some cutting disasters with the QCR but as long as you follow the very clear instructions  then its fine. The assembly was pretty easy too and I’ve done a fair few curved quilts now so sewing curves isn’t too scary. Mind you I do like using the curve master sewing foot which helps. In fact these curves are really very slight compared to some  I’ve done but maybe pride comes before a fall as when it came to trimming them it was a very different matter!

Sewing curves particularly when you’re not starting on the straight  like you would do with the drunken path block invariably leads to a little bit of distortion which then needs trimming. Whilst reasonably clear instructions are given and there is even a video which makes it look very easy, try as I might I could not get my curves sewn accurately and/or trimmed well enough to achieve joins that were always smooth. The ones below went pretty well. Trust me they didn’t always end up like this! But as it was a quilt for me and perfectionism has never been my thing and really who is going to be judging the quilt in my bedroom anyway (! ) then I didn’t bother to resew many.

I was bemoaning the fact in a recent post that my quilts have a tendency to be too small and too thin. And I certainly wanted to rectify that with this quilt. So instead of cotton I used a woollen  batting for the first time and a flannel backing. To cut to the chase I’m really pleased with this combination. It has made a really cosy quilt and just the right weight for a Autumn/Winter quilt.  It’s got a lovely drape and good loft so that FMQ shows up beautifully.

Mindyou when I come to wash it I may well rue the day I chose that combination! Hobbs’ instructions are a delicate cool wash and low spin, OK I can do that and I will add numerous colour catchers first time round (all those reds….) then apparently it needs to be aired dryed. With the existing cats’ flannel quilts they go straight into the dryer but they have a fleece background and come out soft and cosy every time but they’ve no wool in sight. I’m hoping when the quilt is almost dry a quick tumble in a coolish dryer will be enough to soften the flannel. As a precaution whilst I didn’t pre wash the batting I did pre-tumble dry it just to check nothing dreadful happened.  It didn’t. I’m going to wait until it needs washing rather than do a preemptive wash!!

Other than the usual basting challenge, quilting it proved to be reasonably easy. Even if my quilt helpers were doing anything but helping with quilting! Indeed Minty the grey cat, although you can’t see it too clearly, at the point he was sitting on the quilt was absolutely sodden from a very wet afternoon out!

It was a bit of a marathon session to hand sew the binding but I was determined to sleep under it that night! And a very warm sleep it was until the alarm went off…

Linking up to Heidi at Red Letter Quilts as this is my September One Monthly Goal. Also linking to Amanda at Crazy Mom Quilts and Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict  

Linking up to Nicky at Mrs Sew and Sow as this is also a 2016 Q3 FAL finish – see here for my FAL list of targets