college quilt top completed

The quilt top for my college-bound girl is complete! She laid out all the blocks to her liking, and I think she did a fabulous job evenly balancing the lights and darks.

The pattern is "Green Glass Door" by Blue Underground. The finished size of this quilt is 78" x 87" which I thought was big enough for a dorm-sized bed. But I've just learned that dorm beds are 80" long! So I think we're going to add a 7" or 8" strip to the top edge of the quilt to add some needed length. Maybe a near solid in a darker teal, or a strip of a bigger patterned print bordered by some 1.5" width strips like all the blocks. I don't think either will look too out of place, since the top will be covered by a pillow most of the time, but if you've got a different idea let me know ASAP!

There are lots of Amy Butler prints from a few of her fabric lines in this quilt - Daisy Chain, Midwest Modern 2, and Lark. Also a little Joel Dewberry Modern Meadows, and of course Kaffe - shot cottons and prints. A nicely blended hodgepodge of teal and turquoise :)

I'm sending it out to be quilted - this thing seems huge to me! It's the largest quilt I've made to date. As I was crawling around on the floor pinning the last long seam I thought to myself, "this is why you haven't made a king-sized quilt for your own bed!"

It definitely needs a name. So far I'm drawing a blank...

Amy Butler Pillow LOVE

Finished another new pillow this week for my upcoming October pillow class. The focus for this session is adding cording/piping to the pillow edge. Originally I was just going to add the cording to a non-quilted piece of fabric, and so I did that with this beautiful Amy Butler print from her "Love" line and some Happy Dots from Midwest Modern. But when I looked at it I thought: "wicked boring."

So I decided the solution would be to quilt the heck out of the top. I removed the cording and free-motion quilted around all the flowers and swirly shapes, re-attached the cording, and then I LOVED it :)


To make the cording I used an amazing new product called Nancy Zieman Wrap 'N Fuse Piping (it comes in different sizes - I used 3/16")... basically it is cording wrapped with fusible web, so all you have to do is wrap your bias strip around the cording, iron, and TA-DA! you are ready to go. I will never make cording with a zipper foot again!


I added a fun wide-striped backing and placed the zipper off-center between two of the stripes. I used an invisible zipper this time - primarily due to the fact that I bought the wrong kind and was in too much of a hurry to go back and get the right one. For traditional installations I'm going to stick with all purpose zippers and save the invisible ones for pillow edge seam insertion. But hey, it's functional and "Love"ly, and what more can you ask for?


Enjoy this first weekend of fall! I'm planning to indulge in some apple cider donuts :)

P.S. Hop on over to this site to show off your Amy Butler creation and enter to win some great prizes!