Rainbow Cross Quilt

The week before a dear friend’s 40th birthday I made the split decision to make her a quilt. The challenge of making a full quilt in a week was kind of ridiculous but you know what they say – pressure creates diamonds! Well that’s my story and I’m sticking to it…

This project went right down to the wire. These pictures were snapped within about five minutes of me finishing hand stitching the binding. I dragged my husband away from the football and made him hold it just as the daylight was fading. Two hours later we were at the 40th birthday party and the quilt was given to the birthday girl.

I kept the quilting super simple, just straight lines either side of each cross. Mostly straight. Sort of a drunk kind of straight.  Hey, I was under serious time pressure, ok!

I like to call this binding “the Beetlejuice binding” in honour of one of my favourite childhood films. Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice!

It was my intention to use the Ikea forest print as the backing, but when I lined it up with the quilt top I realised it was two inches short in it’s width. Waaaaahhh! A quick dash to the shops resulted in combining it with this rainbow geometric print for the final back.

Another major challenge I faced during the construction of this quilt was the fact that I stuffed up the cutting right at the beginning. I cut most of my blocks…and once that was done realised that the rectangles had to be 2.75″. I’d cut them all as 2.5″.  Argh.

I wasn’t about to waste all that fabric so I made the blocks anyway and trimmed the excess off the edges to correct each one, meaning that my blocks were smaller than the original design. You can find the block tutorial here at Kelbysews. (Yep the same blogger who designed the one hour basket! She does good work!)

My friend was very excited about the quilt and even texted me at midnight to tell me how good it looked on her bed! Ha! So glad it was special for her.

I would have loved a bit more time and given this one a bit more polish, especially with the quilting, but overall I’m very pleased with it. But phew what a marathon…it will be small projects for the next little while!