First Project: Queen Size Bedspread

It's big and it's splashy. Colors loud enough to wake you up at night.

I designed it to go with the "Chicken Quilt" (which my mother made for me decades ago). That quilt now hangs on the wall in my MIL's spare bedroom (more about it later).


The design uses "snowballs" - a square with corner triangles that make it look somewhat round. Snowball blocks are remarkably easy, so they were a good "first pattern" for me.


If you've never made a quilt, you might wonder how the layers are assembled. For this project, I spread the backing on the floor (had to move furniture for this...) then rolled out the batting on top of that and finally the top. Then I crawled around on it, using 200 safety pins (starting in the middle and then working outward) to pull the 3 layers together.


My stitches are fat and sloppy - not the lovely, even perfection of my mother's quilts. Her quilts are works of art. Mine? Well.. it looks like it was stitched by an 8-year old. But I don't care. The joy of making it was so great that it doesn't matter if it's not perfect. It's functional and that's all I really required of this first project.

In the photo above the 2 red blocks don't appear to match. That's due to the camera and flash, as the fabrics do match beautifully.


Quilt lovers always want to see the reverse side, so here you are.

But wait! What's that in the middle?
(sheepish look on my face)

Well... I'm really bad at estimating yardage. On this project I bought way too much of the top fabric - but for the backing I managed to come up short - so I grabbed a scrap of the black and inserted it. Looks awful, doesn't it? I should have at least used a white background print. Now that it's done it reminds me of a cigarrette burn. A sympathetic friend suggested that I make this center "splat" my "signature feature" and do that in every quilt. Her idea was it would make it easy to spot a "Liz Davies Quilt". Well, she's right about it making my quilts distinctive, but I don't think I'll be repeating this particular "feature".

Upon ending this project last week I discovered a mistake that I'd made - one that I will never make again: not having another quilt project ready to start. Sure, I had scraps and a few bits and pieces, but I hadn't actually thought through the next design, let alone having enough fabric to actually start a new one. To make matters worse, I finished this first quilt just before Easter weekend - and so once I had my next design I found my favorite fabric stores were closed for the holiday (many stores here in Australia close for Good Friday and Easter Sunday).

So for about a week I've been going thru "quilting withdrawal" - a horrible affliction. (insert pitiful moaning)

I've learned my lesson. From here out I vow to have overlapping projects so I need never deal with withdrawal again.