Stripes quilt by Katie Blakesley swimbikequilt.com

Have you ever made a quilt based on the pattern, but not actually followed the directions in the pattern? Perhaps it is because I’m not good at following directions, or perhaps its that I like doing my own thing? I purchased the Shirt Stripes Pattern from Alexia Abegg, got a general feel for the quilt construction and strip sizes, and then just went for it!

I used Moonrise, Alexia’s Collection for Cotton and Steel for this quilt, along with one of the Add it Up prints, also Cotton and Steel.

One of the funnier parts about making this quilt, and perhaps one of the reasons that I decided to just kind of wing it: my mom and I pieced the quilt together on my Bernina and my Janome. We had a great time together, and when we went to put it together we realized… the quarter inch seam allowances were slightly different. Slight difference doesn’t make a big difference, unless you are piecing together dozens of skinny strips! Oh my, if it hadn’t been so funny, I might have lost it. But it was easy enough to just approximate the pattern, and I think it turned out great.

I think if I had to make this quilt over again, I would cut long, skinny strips, piece them together, and then chop them into sections, instead of cutting smaller strips and piecing them together. I did trim the individual strip sets before sewing them all together—its hard to keep strip sets totally straight/even.

One of my favorite parts of the quilt is the back! I used multiple extra stripe strips, and then even incorporated the selvage. This was a baby quilt for my cousin’s daughter, so “Be A Dreamer” sounded like a great message for her.

I love a scrappy binding, and this was no exception! I had a really pretty cross weave in my stash, but not quite enough for the whole quilt, so I dug into my scraps from previous bindings and found some that worked well.

We washed and dried this quilt before we gifted it, and I love how it crinkled right up. Abby Latimer quilted it for me with these concentric circles, which play really well with the stripes, I think

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