When one of my best friends announced she was pregnant I knew immediately that I wanted to sew a quilt for the little one. My experience with quilting is rather limited. After a tedious project in high school I was convinced I hated quilting. Matching up all those seams seemed to be impossible and I am too much of a perfectionist to be happy with un-matching seams. It then took almost 15 years before I considered quilting again.

Through the online sewing community I was introduced to the fascinating world of quilting and learned that there were really modern designs out there. Seeing quilts pop up at various garment sewists’ blogs made me curious to give it another try. The perfect occasion came around when my boyfriend became a godfather for the first time and we were thinking about a present for the baby for the christening. By the time we had collected all the materials we had one week until my boyfriend had to leave for Germany which meant we had to power through a whole weekend to finish it. It came together surprisingly quickly, it just does help immensely when two people are working on it at the same time. While my boyfriend was cutting and ironing I was sewing it all together. The design was the same as the one pictured only with slightly different colours.

Designwise I was inspired by Katie’s quilt, I just love the geometric design. I tried to find a triangle size that allowed for enough pattern play but wouldn’t lead to a crazy amount of work. In the end I settled for triangles with a base length of 20cm which lead to final quilt size of approximately 140cm x 90cm. For the construction I didn’t really follow any instructions. After cutting the triangles, I randomly sewed together squares out of 4 triangles and using a cardboard template checked if they were all the same size. I then laid the squares out and rearranged them until I liked the design. Then I sewed together rows and attached one to the other. Stitching in the ditch I sewed the top layer, batting and bottom layer together. This part was surprisingly time consuming. As I followed every single seam I had a lot of rows to sew along. I finished the quilt with some store bought polka dot bias binding. I attached the top bit by machine and secured the back with invisible hand-stitches. It took me two full evenings watching Netflix to finish it, but I like that it looks very neat. The first time I was a little bit nervous throwing the quilt in the wash (apparently this is the thing some quilters are most looking forward to) but it came out looking nicely crinkled.

The quilt pictured is now my second quilt. I took a lot more time to do this one and finished it over a couple of weeks. It matches up pretty well, even though the perfectionist in me still finds some seams that are a little bit off. I just tell myself that this is how the recipients will know that the quilt was hand-made. I have to say I enjoyed the quilting process more than I would have expected. There is something incredibly therapeutic about repeating the same step over and over again. And I love the final result. It feels modern and reminds me of some of my favourite Danish designs. I must have subconsciously been influenced by my year in Copenhagen. Now I only have to find the time and muse to make a full size one for our sofa.