A New Quilt and a New Bedroom

First of all, the new quilt doesn't go in the new bedroom. Actually, the new bedroom doesn't even have a bed but more of that later.

As regular readers will know, my son moved into his new house earlier this year and I decided to make him a quilt to mark the occasion. He asked for one to go on the coffee table which he inherited from his Grandma which sounded like a good idea. Now this is quite a substantial coffee table - about 4' x 6' - and I normally only make small quilts but I didn't let that put me off. 

The planning was easy. I decided to make a rail fence quilt using lots of different colours and, in February, I sewed the first trial block.

Simple to cut and easy to sew. I worked out that I needed 84 blocks all together so I set about cutting and piecing them, one colour group at a time. By March I had all the blocks done and pieced together - so far, so good.

There was a bit of a delay while I hunted through my large stock of fabric for something big enough for the wide border ... and then I had to hunt again for some fabric for a narrow, inner border.

I was a bit apprehensive about pinning such a big quilt but had a breakthrough when I thought of Mum hanging her big quilts from the bannisters to pin them. I didn't fancy doing that but it did give me the idea of putting my big square table in the middle of the room and letting the quilt hang from the sides of that. This worked a treat and gravity helped smooth out the creases.

I worked out a simple quilting pattern made up of lines, curves and circles and set to work. You may or may not be able to make it out in this picture ...

I think it's a bit clearer on the back. You can see how the lines come together to create circles (sort of).

I really like watching the quilting appear; it's like the back stitch on a cross stitch picture, it turns a flat design into something with depth and texture. There is one slight drawback though - hand quilting takes a long time. And when you're making a big quilt, it takes a very long time.

So  ... I quilted through the Spring and then had a few weeks break to make this quilt for a friend's birthday. This is only a mini quilt, the sort of thing I normally make. The pictures are some of her old family photos.

Then it was back to quilting the big quilt. I quilted through the Summer and on into Autumn. By September I'd moved on to quilting that big border and I finished it on the 1st October.

Then there was just the little matter of binding the quilt. Little? I'd decided to piece a scrappy binding which was just as well because I ended up needing six metres of it. I machine sew my bindings on to quilts and then hand stitch them down on the wrong side, something I normally see as a quick task at the end but this one took days (of course it did). Finally though, eight months after cutting the first strip of fabric, it was finished.

I'm really pleased with it (and so is my son). I haven't got a photo of it on his table yet but here are a few  more taken here.

You can see the scrappy binding in this one ...

... and, of course, a quilt isn't finished until it's been labelled (something I could very rarely get my Mum to do with her quilts).

That's the quilt accounted for. Now for the new bedroom. After the huge undertaking that was my new room of requirement (craft room) last year, this year's big house project is a new bedroom for me. With a lot of help, I am turning what was my daughter's old bedroom into mine. It's on the top floor of the house, next to my craft room so I'm gradually moving upwards. I wanted to sleep at the back of the house which is quieter and also has a lovely view across all the gardens which make up a big green space.

The room has been used to store all sorts of stuff for ages, here are a few 'before' pictures.

Piles of books, old photos and more than a few empty bookcases waiting to find somewhere to live. There's also a pile of my daughter's stuff waiting for her to move somewhere where she has room for it. 

More books, boxes and a spare bed. Do you see the dolls house with the red roof? My Mum and Dad gave me that for my seventh birthday, I re-furnished it and gave it to my daughter when she was four and now she's given it back to me (now that I've reached the age of nostalgia). I'm hoping to find room for it in my new bedroom and to bring it back to life. I've still got a few of the original furnishings back from when it was new.

As you can imagine, it took us quite a while to empty the room (and yes, all the other rooms are a bit fuller now). Mind you, another huge pile of bags for the charity shops went out of the house, at some point the house must surely look a bit emptier?

The first thing to do was the painting. I wanted to keep the original colours (yellow walls and dark pink woodwork) but it was all it a bit tatty and grubby so I gave it another couple of coats of paint. This was hard going, even though I only did one coat on one wall per day but I got it done in the end.

When I'd finished the walls, my daughter came for the weekend and painted the ceiling for me and, between us, we trimmed some of the old shelves I put up years ago so that they fitted a bit better.

The other thing we got done that weekend was to finish the new curtains for the room. I was fine at doing the sewing - again, a couple of seams a day - but my Long Covid brain can't cope with calculations so I didn't trust  myself when it came to all that measuring and cutting. My son helped me measure and cut the fabric so that the pattern matched and then my daughter helped me with the hemming. 

It's times like this when an old house shows its true colours. Big windows and uneven floors mean that you can't just hem both curtains to the same length; one has to be a bit longer than the other so that they're level with the floor. I chose a lovely, old-fashioned rose fabric for my new curtains. After the modern look of the room of requirement, this one is going to be pure 1960s Hampshire (told you I was nostalgic).

Over this last week I've been re-varnishing the floor (and my hands) so that looks nice and new too. The next thing to do is to order my new bed (the old one is staying in the old bedroom as a spare bed). Unfortunately, choosing the bed involves numbers again so I'm having help with this too. I've decided to get a small double which is 4' rather than 4'6" wide to take up less space but can't decide on which length to get. I've found a company who make custom sizes (including mattresses to fit) so I'm thinking of a slightly shorter bed too but don't know yet whether I'm going to get a 6' or a 5'9" - decisions, decisions.

I'm hoping to have the bed, my chest of drawers and my clothes rail (I don't think I've ever owned a wardrobe) in place by Christmas so that I can move up there. Then I can see what room I've got left up there for other pretty things ...