Sunday, November 23, 2014

"Postcards from Prague" - A Finished Voile Quilt

 *This quilt is on my Finish A Long Quarter 4 list - here are my original goals. I'm linking up to The Littlest Thistle!*

My latest quilt finish is a special one. I bought a fat quarter set of Anna Maria Horner's cotton voile, a lightweight material, from Westwood Acres about a year and a half ago (gahhhh, so long ago), and I decided this summer I was finally going to make something with it, gosh darn it. I supplemented the FQ bundle with some voile yardage from my stash, and I still have fat eighths left of most prints to make something else! Yay!


After pondering and searching Pinterest/blogs for inspiration, I found my friend Debbie's Postcard Quilt-A-Long tutorial. Debbie's quilt is so gorgeous and well done! This quilt design was perfect because it allowed me to show off the gorgeous large prints. You all know I'm a huge fan of pretty much everything Anna Maria Horner makes - so I was itching to really do the prints justice. I decided to mix things up a bit from Debbie's quilt; I changed the line that separates the prints every two columns. You can see above that from left to right, the line color changes from green to black to light gray.


I pieced the backing with a mishmash of AMH voiles that all coordinated nicely together. I originally bought that bottom right pink flower print for an infinity scarf, but I knew I'd get more out of it on the quilt. :) It's filled with bamboo batting by Quilter's Dream. Thanks to all of your suggestions on here and on Instagram, I own the softest quilt in the world! I bound it in a dark purple Free Spirit solid (sorry, I don't know the color) and a couple peeks of Alison Glass's purple Field Day print. I chose quilting cotton for the binding because I think it will hold together better than a voile binding would.


I didn't want to sew on a piece of quilting cotton for the label, so I hand embroidered the binding before I machine sewed it on. I would definitely do this again in the future - although I'm not very fast, so it took more than an hour!


If you've never made an all-voile quilt, it's definitely something for your quilting bucket list! It's the perfect quilt for when you want a quilt but not something too warm or heavy. I've been using it all week and I'm so happy. It was a bit difficult to cut (it's slippery) but use a sharp blade and go slowly - I wrote up more tips for sewing with voile when I first started this project. I actually found it easy (maybe TOO easy) to free motion quilt - I had to slow down a lot. Also, I didn't plan on quilting "densely" but I ended up doing so anyway (like with Breeze) simply because I just love to quilt. It did not make a difference at all in the softness of the final quilt.


I named the quilt "Postcards from Prague" for three reasons: a) the Postcard pattern (see more beautiful versions here) b) Prague is one of my favorite cities in the world and c) it reads very "bohemian" to me.


Here, I tested the quilt before it was actually done. I asked my husband Mike to pass me a quilt, and when he gave me one of the finished quilts on the couch, I shook my head and pointed to this one. He laughed and took this picture. I just couldn't wait to use it!


I love this quilt so much. I just got a new haircut so it seemed right to pose with it! :) Thanks, as always, to Mike for the awesome photography. He's the best!

I wrote about this quilt previously here, here and here.


13 comments:

  1. Oh what a beauty this one is! I can only imagine how luxurious it is, with the voile combined with the bamboo batt - lovely! Congrats - I have no doubt you will enjoy this one ALOT!

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  2. Totally adding a voice quilt to my bucket list! This quilt turned out so lovely! The pattern really does work well for all those prints. I totally agree with binding it with quilting cotton. I know the voile was different enough, but did you notice much difference with the bamboo batting? I'd like to try it sometime. And your hair looks so cute!

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  3. That turned out beautifully. You did such a great job on it.

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  4. Beautiful. Thank you for sharing. I'm going to have to make voile quilt one of these days.

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  5. Love It! The colors are so incredible. I think I just added it to my list!!

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  6. I love this quilt and I love your haircut! The name is so perfect. Have you been to Prague? It's an amazing city... if you go, you should take this quilt to take a picture of it in it's namesake city :) I'm excited to try the bamboo batting now... must finish our bed quilt, stat!

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    Replies
    1. Take a picture of the quilt over a railing, and photoshop it on to a picture like this: http://www.prague-pictures.cz/images/86.jpg
      lol :)

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  7. You have really made the most of your beautiful fabrics - great choice of quilt design.

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  8. A lovely, bight quilt!
    Nice new hair-do.
    Happy days!

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  9. This is so lovely. And the back is great as well. :-)

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  10. The idea about stitching the label info on to the binding is genius!! Very pretty quilt. Happy Thanksgiving!

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  11. This quilt is beautiful, but most of all, it looks so-o-o comfortable!. Great label!

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  12. A lovely finish, and it certainly looks very cuddly! Linda

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