Several years ago I bought four different coloured wool fabrics to make a quilt. They went into a space bag and there they stayed! Then Wendy from @Wendyquilter on Instagram contacted me and offered to coach me through a chevron quilt. I was really thrilled as I had chosen the fabrics to make a chevron quilt, but didn’t have a clue how to go about it, in spite of the lady in the shop giving me instructions which went in one ear and out the other. Wendy took the time to send me detailed and comprehensive notes, followed up with generous emails.

As per Wendy’s instructions, I cut my fabric into squares, sewed two together on the diagonal, cut them between the two diagonal lines of stitching, and finished up with two toned squares.

As you can see from the threads below there was much unpicking

mostly because my sewing looked like this

I gradually got it sewn together, row by row, getting support and encouragement from Wendy as I went

and then I was one square short! I had already pieced a couple of squares from scraps, but I still had to buy a square of wool and get it shipped to Perth. I was so upset (and considerably poorer), but I had to finish the quilt.

Once I had it finished I needed a backing. I had a rummage in the stash and found some beautiful vintage Japanese kimono silk that I bought at the last Fibres West garage sale – in fact, it was “sold” to me by a friend. It wasn’t my colour and it was full of hand stitched repairs, but perfect for my quilt.

I patchworked together enough to make a backing and had more decisions to make. Should I roll excess to the front to create a binding? I didn’t think the colour coordinated with the wool well enough, so then I investigated what I could use as a binding and couldn’t find anything in my stash that would go with all the colours. I then behaved like a garment maker and bagged out the lining!

The choice of wadding was interesting too. Wendy mentored me through this process and in the end I chose a fine wool batting with no loft that I had in my stash.

The problem with bagging out, I discovered, is that, although I thought I had pulled the silk tight when I sewed it, I seemed to have excess. The wool also moved about and I just couldn’t get the three layers (wool, batting, silk) to sit together nicely so I finished up unpicking my machine stitching, which took hours. Then I began hand sewing and had to pull a lot of that out too.

In the end I hand stitched the whole thing, standing at my cutting table, so the quilt was completely flat. I needed to constantly check that the lining was also flat as it was easy to get a big crease.

It’s not the best job and wouldn’t win any awards, but I’m really happy with it and it is so warm.

I actually wanted this for our holiday place, but used it at home when Mark was away recently. It has a nice weight and is a perfect size.

It has taken me about four months to make this quilt, from start to finish, which I thought was an exceptionally long time, and then a quilting neighbour showed me a quilt that it took her twelve years to make. Twelve years!

I need to really thank Wendy for her time, patience and generosity. She was really busy and I so appreciated the fact that she coached me into turning four pieces of wool fabric and some unused silk into a quilt which I will use for years to come.

I think it looks pretty jolly good and I hope Wendy does too.

As I write this I realise that I didn’t put a label on it. I shall do this in the fullness of time!