GBFs parents, Joan and Brian celebrated their 70th birthday in August 2009. They share the same birthday, how sweet is that!! What better gift for a special birthday than a quilt!

A spy mission to find out what colours they might like revealed that their bedroom was white. White everything!!! I knew I wasn't quite up to a beautiful hand stitched whole cloth quilt so I decided on a mix of soft pastels. To represent their 70 years I used 70 different fabrics Well.. give or take one or two, I may have lost count but it would be pretty close.

The pattern I based it on was Kaffe Fassett's Wedding Quilt from his Passionate Patchwork book. I didn't make this quilt as large as his and I changed the border. It's like my cooking, I never seem to be able to follow a recipe exactly.

All the blocks are hand pieced, my first attempt at American hand piecing. They were fun to do and a great project for on the go. Considering I was sewing by hand I was surprised that they seemed to come together quite quickly. I then sewed the blocks together by machine. I'm impressed by people who even do that part by hand as well.

It was so refreshing to use soft colours after all the brights I tend to lean towards. Some of the blocks have fruity fabric that Joan had given me and I thought it worked well just to add some boost of colour here and there. She's given me some lovely fabrics from her stash that she's collected over the years. Little bits pop up a lot in my quilts.


I used a beautiful big ribbon print by Martha Negley for the backing. I seem to use a lot of her prints for my backing. I love their water colour quality and their large scale makes them perfect for being used in whole pieces. I had a little private joke with myself about this fabric because my Floristry teacher would always say "it's not a gift until it has a bow".

I sent this off to Maxine Sandry for long arm quilting. It was quilted edge to edge with simple feather design that really suited the quilt.

Joan and Brian loved their quilt. They even bought pillows to match.


Cheerio