Liberty for the bed!

This quilt has been a long time coming! I started collecting pieces of Liberty of London fabrics several years ago – just tiny pieces here and there, hoping that one day I’d have enough to make an entire quilt out of these gorgeous fabrics (and they are gorgeous, though definitely more expensive than your typical quilting cotton, which explains why it took me so long to collect enough for a quilt!).

In addition to purchasing pieces of Liberty, several generous friends added extra variety to this quilt by sending along the most beautiful pieces so I’d have enough squares to bring this up to size. I wish I could name names, but I’m writing this late at night and I’m quite certain that I’d forget someone and then I’d feel awful. So hopefully these friends know who they are, and know how much I appreciate their generosity.

As you can see, it makes a great quilt for hanging out on outside (or for showing off your dance moves, as the case may be!), but in actuality, its permanent home is on our bed. You might remember that when I made up the quilt top, it ended up a nice queen size, though we had just switched to a king sized bed. I added a couple extra rows to bring it up to size, and though it was perfect pre-washing, it did shrink a bit. It still fits nicely on the bed, though if I’m being honest, I do wish it were a bit bigger.

I backed this in Cotton Couture Orchid, and used the lowest loft batting by Quilter’s Dream. I love this batting, and have been using it quite often. I love the lowest loft for summer weight quilts, or for soft lightweight baby blanket/quilts. I think this will be a perfect quilt for the bed next summer (for now it’s layered over another quilt, and while I often wake up incredibly hot, I love seeing it on the bed, so there it shall remain!

The quilting is once again done using Elizabeth’s dogwood pattern, which I love. It’s a fun quilting pattern, and actually goes pretty quickly, so while I was dreading quilting a King sized quilt on my home machine, it really wasn’t as bad as I expected (that thin batting really helped too – so much less bulk to shove through the machine!)

[I’d show this to you on our bed, but I’ve been trying (unsuccessfully!) to clean out a few rooms for a while now, and consequently our room is in that ‘messier before it gets cleaner’ stage.]

Anyway, thank you again to those friends who helped make this quilt possible! I absolutely love all the variety, and have already spent much time admiring individual squares and remembering where they came from. Thank you, thank you!

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I thought it would be fitting to pass along a bit of this Liberty love, so please leave a comment here and I’ll drop your name into the hat for a little bundle of special Liberty pieces that will hopefully either add to your collection, or help you start a collection of your own! I’ll select a winner on Sunday. 

Congratulations to Colleen (comment #218, as selected by random.org). Thank you all for reading, and for leaving such sweet comments about my quilt!