Jumbled Spoon Quilt, 54 x 60 inches
My Jumbled Spools Quilt is done! I had so much fun designing this quilt, sewing it and doing the quilting. There were some bumps in the process but that's just part of designing.
I used Robert Kaufman's solid Kona Cotton
for the "thread" on the spools.
There are only 41 colors in this collection. I added a yellow from my stash to make the 42nd spool. This would also be fun to make using 2.5 inch x 4 inch scraps from your stash.
Here is the inspiration for my design!
I inherited my mother's sewing table a number of years ago. It's a lovely piece of mid-century Modern Danish teak furniture. It has a drawer for notions and a pull-out basket to store clothing that needs to be mended. I love having it, but it doesn't really function well as a sewing table for my needs so I've never cleaned it out and claimed it for my own. I raid it for buttons, needles and the occasional notion but it's essentially the just way it was when it arrived at my house. Well, actually it has gotten a bit messier! My niece was visiting recently. She pulled open the drawer of the sewing table. I was working in the kitchen but I could see what she was doing. I heard her say "Oops!" and quickly shut the drawer. I cracked up! What a great reaction! Well deserved too, I might add!
I searched for spool quilt patterns and found lots of them on-line and in quilting books. The spools are usually all lined up in neat rows. I wanted something more true to (my) real life! So that's why I designed my quilt with the spools all jumbled!
Jumbled Spools Quilt showing the backing.
The quilting continues the jumbled theme. I did free motion random loops for the body of the quilt which creates a "bad thread day" feel.
Some of the spools have tight parallel rows of quilting but the majority of them them have a zig-zag pattern on the body of each spool. The two quilting patterns on the spools represent the two ways that spools of thread are wound during manufacturing.
In the border on the right side of the quilt I did straight linear quilting 1/2 inches apart using my walking foot.
I made this quilt with rotary cut pieces. Some of the spools tops and bottoms don't match up the the body of the spool as neatly as I thought they would. I rather like them that way--it looks like some of the thread on the spools has been used.
There is a pattern which you can use to make your own Jumbled Spools in the next post.