Naive Melody quilt, as an art quilt

June 13, 2021

Last April, during the first pandemic lockdown, Lucy Engels started making this quilt as part of the #100dayproject. I was admiring every single beautiful block that she made, a total of 100 blocks. Almost all made of applique and a few pieced blocks. Fortunately she decided to make a pattern out of it! So September 1st the sew-a-long started.

Quilt Process

Lately every quilt that I make is pre-designed on Illustrator, and then comes to life. But for this pattern I only had to choose my main fabrics, and the applique pieces (all of them) came out of my scrap bin. I just love my scrap bin, and how it slowly reduced in size this past year.

So every month we had to make approximately 20 blocks (give or take). Fascinating process, and it made me work harder. I also had to miss one deadline, I think it was October, and I had to make 40 something blocks the next month. And I made them in just 10 days! What an adventure!

Machine quilting

Well, machine quilting did not go as smoothly as I would like it to. I didn’t baste the quilt evenly, and so this resulted in some bad puckering in certain areas… yes there was some crying during the process. But in the end, all well, after all only us quilters see our mistakes, and no-one else.

Binding

Since it was decided that this quilt was going to be hanged on the wall, faced binding was my to-go solution. It was the first time I tried it, and by following Audrey Esarey’s (Cotton & Bourbon) facing tutorial, it was totally easy!
In the photos you can see how wonderfully the whole quilt “stands” on the wall!

Quilt Dimensions

When my companion-in-life saw the blocks all together sewn, he said “this should be on our living room wall”. And so it did. I adjusted the measurements, and decided to piece the blocks as a rectangle. I pieced a total of 98 blocks, instead of 100, and the size is 84 x 42 inches.

Just perfect to fit our living room wall.

Dates

Quilt started: September 2020

Quilt finished: February 2021

Pattern Used

Naive Melody quilt by Lucy Engels. I think everybody understood how much I liked making this pattern. It is very well writen, and gets you hooked up on applique, (again!).