The Lovely Orchard Quilt

Last year, when I had a lot of Thinsulate to use up, I made a Coronvirus quilt. When I finished that queen-sized quilt, I estimated that I had enough pieces of Thinsulate left to make a 4' x 6' quilt, and I decided I'd make that second throw-sized quilt up for my friend Lindsie's daughter -- my honorary niece, Olivia -- as I thought she would enjoy having her own special little quilt that was made for her by her Auntie Beth. And after all, she has outgrown the last blanket I made for her. 

In April 2021, after I finished Olivia's dress and purse for her 5th birthday, I decided I might as well get the quilt out of the way too, so I got out the Thinsulate and my fabric. The fabric I chose for this project was the one you see in the photo above. It's called Lovely Orchard, and was designed by Suling Wang for Camelot Cottons, and I was very taken with it at first sight. This quilt will probably last at least ten years, so I didn't want to use a cutesy, juvenile fabric for it, but rather to choose something that would both appeal to Olivia now and that she could grow up to. This simple, pretty print seemed to fit the bill. I like that the fabric is probably going to prove very much to Lindsie's taste too -- she has contemporary taste and especially loves the Japanese aesthetic, which this print is similar to. I'd hate to saddle her with something she considers an eyesore and that will be in her house for years to come.  

The finished quilt. It turned out very well and I am pleased with it. The 42" x 79" size was not quite what I had expected at the outset, but it will do. It can be used as a blanket on Olivia's single bed.

Making the coronavirus quilt felt like a herculean effort and it took me ten months to take the project from start to finish last year, though of course I wasn't working at it at all regularly during those months, but only in starts and fits. That wasn't at all my experience this time. Olivia's quilt took me just thirteen days start to finish, and I worked at it an average of two hours a day. On day one, I pieced the leftover pieces of Thinsulate together, cut two lengths of the print, and pinned the layers together. On days two to eight, I stitched the body of the quilt in vertical lines a half-inch apart. On day nine, I prepared the binding and squared the quilt by trimming the edges evenly. On day ten, I machine stitched the binding in place, flipped it over and pinned it to be hand-sewn on the other side of the quilt, and began the hand sewing. On days eleven through thirteen, I did the remaining hand sewing.  

The whole process was so straightforward and unproblematic that it amazed me. When I was making the first quilt, I struggled a lot with having to laboriously rip out lines of quilting because the fabric had puckered or folded on the underside. That never happened while I was stitching the body of this quilt -- not even once. Of course, this was an easier project because it was far less work. The coronavirus quilt had a finished size of 78" x 83.5", its quilting lines were 3/8" apart, and I put in over 240 vertical lines of stitching into its body. This quilt has a finished size of 42" x 79", its quilting lines are 1/2" apart (or a hair less), and I think there were 92 vertical lines of stitching in it. This second quilted blanket required not only well under half the actual sewing of the first, but was also far lighter, which made it considerably easier for me to physically control the fabric as I ran it through the machine. But I think the experience I gained in working on the first one contributed just as much to making this second project go so much more smoothly and efficiently. I knew exactly how to hold the quilt so that it wouldn't pucker on the underside, and there was no months' long stall of the project while I put off the task of binding the finished body because I was intimidated by the prospect of  learning how to make binding and put it on. 

When I finished the coronovirus quilt, while I knew I would be making the second smaller quilted blanket for Olivia in order to get that Thinsulate used up, I thought I would probably never make a third. Now I find I'm open to making another quilted blanket at some point. I've had that coronavirus quilt on my bed since last October, and I have been so grateful for it all through Toronto's 2020/2021 winter weather. One of my physical quirks is that I am extraordinarily cold resistant during the day -- strangers sometimes approach me on the street, look significantly at what I'm wearing, or rather not wearing, and say, "Aren't you cold?!" -- but that seems to change radically as soon as I get into bed at night, when I turn into some kind of freak icicle-human hybrid. Before this past year, during the winter, I would have on my bed a top sheet, a quilt, two wool blankets, a fleece blanket, and a duvet in a velvet cover... and it still wasn't enough to keep me from shivering miserably. During the coldest months I would have to spread on top of my duvet not only the afghan from the foot of my bed but also the afghan from the guest room and the faux fur throw and woven throw from the living room couch. This year I had on my bed the top sheet, the old quilt, the new coronavirus quilt, two wool blankets, and the duvet, and sometimes the afghan from the foot of my bed, and that was sufficient. The fleece blanket remained on a shelf in the linen closet and the guest room afghan and living room throws stayed in their places. In other words, that one lightweight Thinsulate quilt took the place of four other layers.       

Now that I know I am confident I can turn out a quilted blanket in such good time, and that a Thinsulate blanket is an excellent thing to have, I am open to making more in future, should I have need for another quilt for my household, or want to make one for a gift. Twenty-six hours of work does not seem to me like an unreasonable amount of effort to put into such a practical item that will last a decade or more. 

I'd originally planned to give Olivia the quilt as part of her Christmas 2021 present, but when I finished it in time for her 5th birthday, which is today, I decided it would become part of her birthday present instead. Of course the rest of her birthday present was more geared to the tastes and interests of a 5-year-old girl than this quilt is. Childless old maid as I may be, I'm not so out of touch as to think a child her age is going to find a quilt an exciting birthday present.   

I have something like 1.3 metres of the Lovely Orchard fabric left, and I've tucked it carefully away in my remnant fabric drawer. I don't have a plan for its use yet, but knowing me I am sure inspiration will strike at some point. And I'm looking forward to working with such a charming print again. As for the Thinsulate... I have just two small pieces left, and they've been tucked away in my drawer of interfacings and linings. Maybe I'll make a pair of mittens out of them sometime. 

The Pandemic Quilt

Some of my project plans originate in my having some supplies sitting around that I want to use up, and some come into being because I need a particular item. In this case it was a matter of both, which is the ideal scenario.

Back in 2012, I came up with a hare-brained plan to make a long velvet coat, and I bought the pattern, the velvet, the lining, the Thinsulate interlining, and even the thread and buttons for it. Then I put off actually making the project for years as I came to the slow realization that it wasn't a good idea, that the coat wasn't going to be warm, that the velvet was too fragile for outerwear, and that I would have very few occasions to wear such a coat. I bought more supplies and made myself a far more serviceable long tweed coat. But that ill-advised velvet coat plan left me with a lot of supplies to use up in some other way. I've made a long skirt out of the beautiful printed velvet and have specific plans to make a few more velvet items (I'll be posting about them all in a single post once they are done), I'll eventually use the buttons and lining for something, but what to do with the Thinsulate was a knottier problem. There was so very much of it -- besides what I'd bought for the coat, I also had quite a bit left from another project I made years before. I'd have to make a number of coats or puffy vests or whatever in order to use it all up, which would be expensive, and what would I do with them once they were done? I didn't need them, and none of the family members and close friends with whom I exchange gifts did either. I faced a future of making puffy vests for everyone I knew, and I didn't like the prospect at all. 

It wasn't until the fall of 2019 that I had a eureka moment. I'd recently cleaned out the blanket box in the attic and been reminded again that I had so much Thinsulate to use up. Just a few days later, when I was vacuuming around the the blanket box and thinking ruefully again about all that Thinsulate folded away inside it, I finally hit upon one of those solutions that seem so obvious in retrospect: I really needed another warm blanket for my bed, and I could use the Thinsulate to make a quilted blanket.

My first step in this plan was to get out the Thinsulate and lay it out and make sure that I had enough for a quilted blanket big enough to fit my queen-sized bed. And I did indeed. After I'd cut and pieced the lengths I wanted for my quilted blanket, I had enough left over to make a 4' x 6' throw-sized quilted blanket, which would make a nice gift for someone, and I tucked away the rest of the Thinsulate, happy to finally have a plan for it all. 

Then in late November 2019, I went shopping for quilting fabric. You can see the print I chose above, a poppy-like fabric with Art Nouveau-ish curves that I thought would accord well with my planned poppy and Art Nouveau-themed bedroom refresh. All things being equal, it would have been my preference to make the entire blanket in this print, but I went with a plain ivory fabric for the backing because it was $6/yard -- compared to the $10/yard price of the print -- and it kept the project cost down somewhat.

 

I don't remember quite when I began sewing. I had never done any quilting to speak of and was a little intimidated, but I think I took the initial plunge in January 2020, and I began quilting the blanket in vertical lines 3/8" apart. The finished size of the blanket is 78 x 83.5". That's 208 lines of stitching -- and I think I did a few more that got trimmed off when I evened up the edges. It was one of those situations where I didn't entirely realize what I'd gotten myself into until it was too late to get out of it. It soon became apparent to me that I had signed up for a LOT of repetitive work, which I quailed from doing. It wasn't until the pandemic hit in March 2020 and we were all told to stay home as much as we could that I really settled into the work of stitching all those lines, and suddenly I was obsessed with the project and it was all I wanted to do. I had to ration myself to do a certain number of lines a day (which I often mentally compared to doing lines of cocaine) because I needed to reserve some time and energy for other things, and because wrestling the thing into place and holding it there as I worked put a strain on my back. 

And I couldn't understand why I was suddenly so consumed with this project until one day it dawned on me. Does the print remind you of anything? Something that's been much in the news this year?

Does it remind you of anything now? Yes, that's right, readers, I spent a good part of the COVID19 pandemic obsessed with making a coronavirus quilted blanket. Before anyone psychoanalyzes me and says I chose the pattern out of some sort of unconscious desire to sublimate my fear of dying, my credit card statement for December 2019 shows that I bought the fabric for this project on November 29, 2019, before the virus existed. It was simply a coincidence... a very freaky coincidence. 

Then, deciding to truly embrace my pandemic experience, I created a special quarantine playlist, which I played while I was working on the quilted blanket. Since we're not out of the woods yet, I thought I would share it with you, on the chance that you might share both my twisted sense of humour and my middlebrow musical tastes:

• "Separate Ways", Journey
• "So Lonely", The Police
• "Solitary Man", Neil Diamond
• "All By Myself", Eric Carmen
• "Alone", Heart
• "Stayin' Alive", Bee Gees
• "So Far Away", Carole King
• "Don't Stand So Close to Me", The Police
• "Ask the Lonely", Journey
• "You're Only Lonely", J.D. Souther
• "The Lonely Ones", Chris Isaak
• "When Will I See You Again", The Three Degrees
• "Solitaire", Carpenters
• "Are You Lonesome Tonight?", Elvis Presley
• "From a Distance", Bette Midler
• "We're All Alone", Rita Coolidge
• "Antisocial", Ed Sheeran & Travis Scott
• "Come Out and Play (Keep 'Em Separated)", The Offspring
• "Separate Lives", Phil Collins
• "Dancing With Myself", Billy Idol
• "Lonesome", Kina Grannis
• "Isolation", John Lennon
• "Only the Lonely", The Motels
• "Living Inside Myself", Gino Vanelli
• "Only Lonely", Divinyls
• "Better Off Alone", Alice DJ
• "Having a Me Party", Amy Adams, Miss Piggy & the Muppets

My cat Trilby did his part to help me with this project by test-napping the quilt before it was bound. It seemed to pass muster.

Here is the finished quilted blanket in all its glory. Trilby, who is sitting on the blanket box, looks unimpressed, but we're just going to ignore him. Whenever I am working with fabric on the attic floor, he's fond of playing a game I call "cat surfing", in which he takes a running leap onto a large piece of fabric and uses his momentum to "surf" across the floor on the piece of fabric, and it was a big disappointment to him that this blanket was too large for him to take for a feline-style magic carpet ride.  

I finished the body of the quilted blanket in early April, but then it sat for some months while I tried to get myself to work on the binding. I'd never bound a quilt before, and I tend to postpone things that I am not sure I can do. But finally in early September 2020, I made myself do it, and as usually happens when I've been putting something off because I dreaded it, found it wasn't nearly so difficult or unpleasant as I expected. These Craftsy tutorials on calculating the amount of quilt binding needed and on binding a quilt were very helpful.

 

I should have stitched the underside of the binding by hand, but cheated and did it on the machine. I would never want to show this project to an expert quilter because it is definitely the work of a novice. The binding, besides being machine stitched, is uneven in places, and there is a place on one corner of the body where my lines of stitches, which are supposed to be straight up and down, take on a definite curve. But it's done, it's a nice-looking piece on the whole, it should last a good long time, it is lightweight and flexible, it should be warm, and I will be using it as a blanket not a bedspread, so the flaws in it won't matter much. 

 Whenever anyone asks me if there's any kind of needlework/textile crafting I don't do, I say "I don't spin, I don't weave, and I don't quilt". I've never had any real interest in quilting. I don't particularly like the look of quilts -- my tastes aren't Victorian or country -- and quilts don't stand up too well to being washed. I can't say this project changed my stance regarding quilting. I am glad I made this one, as I really needed a warm blanket for my bed (I've been piling several afghans on my bed during very cold winter weather in order to stay warm enough at night), and it's so gratifying to have that Thinsulate finally put to good use. I also learned a thing or two about making and applying binding that will likely come in handy in future non-quilting sewing projects. But I'm not sure if this project quite qualifies as a real quilt; I would describe it (as I have done in this post) as a quilted blanket. So, despite my experience with this project, and despite the fact that I will be making a 4' x 6' quilted blanket within the next year to use up what remains of the Thinsulate, I'm still not a quilter.