Back to School Quilt for Janome

Posted by on Aug 20, 2015 in Blog, Janome, Quilts, Tutorials

Earlier this sumer I was asked to contribute a project to the 2015 Janome Institute gathering. The theme was Fall. I could’t get my mind beyond the obvious coloured leaves and pumpkins, which I wasn’t terribly inspired by. I pondered what Fall brings and landed on “back to school”. As last year I had created the Big & Juicy Quilt, I thought a companion piece would work well, and thus I had my colour pallet all worked out for me.

big & juicy quilt - tamara kate
Big & Juicy Quilt

My version of a graphic, modern alphabet quilt seemed like a good balance to the big, bold apple (with a little something extra to keep it young and fun). Michael Miller Fabrics kindly provided me with a generous mountain of black & white and grey fabrics, with the odd hit of metallic thrown in for good measure (and there’s the occasional piece of fabric from my own stash in there too).

back to school quilt - tamara kate
Back to School Quilt

back tosSchool quilt detail - tamara kate

back to school quilt detail2 - tamara kate

I mentioned bits of metallic… Isn’t this fabric great? It’s called Bow Ties and is soon-to-be-available from Michael Miller.

back to school quilt detail3 - tamara kate

The letters are all paper pieced… yes, I finally focused on a good tutorial and got my head around the technique. Really pretty easy.

I have provided Janome with instructions for the quilt that were given out at Institute and once I get the ok from them, I will post them here as well.
For all you Institute attendees, the alphabet templates are available for download below. Enjoy! And if you have any questions, feel free to ask below.

Back to School Templates

Back to School Quilt Instructions

4 Comments

  1. Dena Emeneau
    August 22, 2015

    Both quilts are absolutely gorgeous! Out of curiosity, how big is Big & Juicy???

    • Tamara
      August 24, 2015

      Hi Dena, thanks for your sweet comment. The quilts are both the same size, so that they can be hung side by side. They are 39″ x 48″.

  2. katie
    March 5, 2016

    Hi there 🙂 Love the quilt and the templates. One question–how did you manage to paper piece the letters like ‘x’ and ‘m’? I have the template printed with the number order, but I can’t figure out, for instance, how to do the pieces like number 5 and 7 on the letter ‘x’….

    • Tamara
      March 8, 2016

      Hi Katie, Sorry it took me a while, I’ve been on holiday. So happy you like the quilt. So, for the “X”, you would piece 1, 2 & 3 as a group. Piece 4 & 5 together. Piece 6 & 7 together, then join the 3 pieces. Same idea for the “M”. Keep things in rows or columns so you don’t have to do any y-seams. Hope that makes sense. If you need any other help, give me a shout.