Morris Mania

I've been pretty obsessed with quilting over the last couple of weeks, and have just finished a quilt for my friend Diana. It was meant to be her birthday present last year, but I didn't get it done in time. I didn't get it done in time for her graduation in December either, but it's finished now. Her birthday is not until May but, never having been able to delay gratification even slightly, I've given it to her early (or late, depending on how you look at it).

The fabrics are William Morris reproductions that I bought at least twelve years ago. I've always loved Morris designs and I had more than forty different prints in mostly autumn tones that I was saving for a special quilt. I'd toyed with ideas for various quilt patterns over the years, but none seemed quite right. About three years ago I cut up some of the fabric to make a simple quilt of large squares, laid them out on the floor to see the result – and hated it. Plan B was to recycle some of them, broken up by plain fabric, into a quilt for my friend Angela. She and I both liked the result – plain but effective.

That still left me with a whole lot of both cut and uncut fabrics. Then Kathy Doughty of Material Obsession kindly gave me a pattern that I knew instantly would be perfect. It's just a random arrangement of squares in three different sizes. It works well with the Morris fabrics, despite their busyness.

My favourite of all the fabrics is the one with the flame-coloured
sinuous pattern in the centre.

I originally wanted to hand quilt it with a rambling, Morris-esque floral pattern, but for once I realised my own limitations and decided that was just never going to happen. Instead I got it professionally machine quilted by Belinda Betts, who did a lovely job for a very reasonable fee. It now sits on the arm of my sofa all year round and I totally love myself sick every time I look at it. It's the only quilt I've made so far that I'm completely happy with.

The border of the backing, which is the only fabric
quiet enough to show up the nice quilting.

 

Even after that I still had yet more Morris fabric, so I cut out quarter-circles for Diana's quilt. The original layout was a lot busier than the one below and the fabrics ended up fighting each other. I pared it back to this variation on the Drunkard's Path pattern (the choice of which is not meant as any reflection on Diana's habits!).

The binding

Two of my favourite patches of red

 

The backing fabrics. The khaki one is the only fabric in the quilt that isn't Morris.

Working out the pattern for the border involved a lot of mathematical cogitation and puzzled prodding of the calculator, and even more trial and error in pencilling on, then rubbing off, various lines until I got them right (more by accident than design; it felt a bit like the quilting equivalent of infinite numbers of typing monkeys eventually bringing forth Shakespeare.) My stitches got a bit smaller in the border, but that's okay. Quilting the border only took a couple of evenings, and was quite enjoyable.

I'm still left with the remaining quarter circles, which I intend to make into a quilt  resembling one on Elinor's bed in the Emma Thompson film of Sense and Sensibility. (Are there any totally tragic and/or sharp-eyed Jane Austen/quilting fans out there who know the one I mean?)

Not even that project will exhaust my supply of Morris fabrics, though. But I reckon I might have done enough Morris-themed quilts for now.