Back to School Quilt for Janome
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.
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).
I mentioned bits of metallic… Isn’t this fabric great? It’s called Bow Ties and is soon-to-be-available from Michael Miller.
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.
4 Comments
Dena Emeneau
August 22, 2015Both quilts are absolutely gorgeous! Out of curiosity, how big is Big & Juicy???
Tamara
August 24, 2015Hi 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″.
katie
March 5, 2016Hi 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, 2016Hi 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.