All Done . . . .

All done except the quilting that is, I don't quilt my own tops, but here's the flimsy.

For those of you stopping by for the first time, or the first time in awhile, this quilt was made from the pattern Nottingham Star by Grace's Dowry Quilts.

This is Lifetime Quilt # 62.

It finished at almost 70" x 70" and has approximately 894 pieces.

The border was a piece of cake,

I went with 4 different creams, reds, browns and stars.

Really, the whole project went together like a dream, and it seemed to go quickly for me.

Once this top is quilted, hopefully by next fall, I plan to put it in the middle of my kingsize bed, on top of a cream coverlet.

As I mentioned yesterday, I've gotten a few questions about how much fabric to buy. It's still hard for me to know how much of a new fabric to get, when I don't have an exact pattern in mind. Or look at this project, I made it from fabric I was collecting for a different pattern, so there's really no exact science to it, especially when you throw in different quilt sizes and little piecing versus extreme piecing. So from now on, when I finish a project, I'll try to give some additional information about the amount of fabric I used.

I have heard that when you see a fabric you like for a background or a border, 3 yards is a good amount. Route 44 needed 3 yards of the background fabric and 3 yards of dot fabric, so that rule held true for that quilt, which was around 75" x 75". I've yet to use a whole fat quarter bundle on a project, so I'm excited about Moda's new fat eighths bundles. One of those bundles with 3 yards for the border should make up a nice size quilt I would think.

I once got a note from a pattern designer asking me to remove some information I provided while working on one of her patterns. She thought I shared too much information and was breaking copyright laws. I had no problem removing the information, if I designed a pattern, I wouldn't want someone giving away all the details either, so I'm not going to provide the exact fabric requirements from the pattern, but they are more like guidelines to me anyway.

The pattern called for 4 different brown, cream and red fabrics.....that wasn't near the amount of variety that I wanted in my top. I probably went with 15 different browns, 20 different reds, and 20 different creams. You could easily make this pattern from scraps in your scrap basket.

I would say 16 fat eighths of the reds , 24 fat eighths of creams and around the same for the browns would give you ample fabric and plenty of variety for this project. I hope you find this information useful.