my huge upholstery fabric quilt
 

My client asked me to make a king-sized quilt for her using upholstery fabrics she has been collecting. The finished monster is 121" square, with 100% low-loft polyester batting, backed with three cotton fabrics (the red one is the fabric that shrank massively in my post in Main, which is why I needed three backing fabrics!), and bound with the purple upholstery fabric from the front. The square blocks are SITD, with larger squares getting an extra quilted square in the middle. The circles are also SITD (just inside the applique satin stitching) with a quilted circle in the middle of larger circles. The rest is quilted with continuous wavy diagonal lines.

The whole thing was pieced and quilted on my DSM. The finished quilt weighs 15 lbs...glad my client is local.

Thanks for looking!

Alison
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nicely done... both sides!

WOW. Is that velvet? Looks to me like you did a great job. I am also glad for you that your client was local. BrendaK

Another Wow! I love it! It is so unique and fun!!

OH my goodness, it's lovely!!!! i made one with upholstery fabrics long ago. wish i'd thought of doing it like this. great quilt!!

Beautiful quilt. You did a very good job.

What a fun, colorful quilt!

It is gorgeous! Hope she likes a weighted feel.... 15 lbs, whew!

Really beautiful!!!

That's going to be very warm to sleep under, but its beautiful- great job!

You did an awesome job!! Is your DSM OK? I did a heavy quilt on mine and knocked the timing out of whack.

You did a wonderful job with that fabric! I can't even imagine putting all of that through a DSM. Yet you came out with a really beautiful quilt, and it looks square and well made too. I'm really really impressed.

What a neat looking quilt. I knew just from your header that it was going to be heavy. I love the way you did the back. Great job!!!

incredible!

Wow! What a fantastically fun quilt!

You did a great job, front and back. Thanks for sharing.

AMAZING! and very, very pretty. Love the pattern.

That was quite a fete! It looks great.

Thats huge. I love it. Great job on it.

Fantastic design! Your quilt is beautiful! I would love to know what workhorse of a DSM you have that stood up to all that! My older machines would have been OK but my newer Pfaff would have died on the spot!

Beautiful, Beautiful!!!!!!!!!!

WOW! that is a gorgeous quilt. I hope they don't want to move it much at that weight.

Beautiful, upholstery fabric sure have gotten a lot brighter and lively since I retired eons ago.

That is absolutely incredibly beautiful!

WOW! It's BEAUTIFUL :thumbup:

Thank you all for your kind words! I like it, but I am VERY glad it is finished...

The purple background fabric is a very short pile velvet with that weird rubbery backing that upholstery fabric sometimes has. No idea what the fiber is (if I did the flame test I'd probably have to evacuate the neighborhood...so many synthetics!). I actually placed the blocks so that the grain would contrast between the circle blocks and the square blocks...but the pile was so low that by the time everything was finished you can't really see any directionality to it. Oh well.

The fabrics my client gave me are awesome - she has a good eye for colors, and all but one of the 9 fabrics she gave me played well together.

I know!! Her legs will go to sleep before she does at night!

My machine is a Kenmore 385 from the early '80s - mechanical, and a real workhorse. She hasn't balked at anything I've tried yet, and I honestly can't imagine doing anything heavier than this beast!

One of the hardest parts of doing this quilt was getting accurate seams - the fabrics were all different thicknesses so I was never sure how much I would lose in a seam allowance. This didn't matter much for the blocks, because I made them over-large and trimmed them to the size I wanted, but when I sewed the blocks together the pieced part ended up 2" smaller in each direction than I had planned...because even though the seams were sewn at 1/4 inch they ended up using 1/2 inch with fabric thickness (does that make sense?) Live and learn...

Alison

That is CRAZY GORGEOUS!!!! Super AWESOME!!!

Oh my goodness! I can't imagine the time and effort that went into that. Amazing job!

OMGosh....that's amazing!!!!

That is Amazing.....congrats on such a great accomplishment.

WOW!!! That is a gorgeous quilt!! Great job!

Great job and great work out!

Fantastic quilting job! Great quilt!

that is a work of art!!! Love it and I bet she does to.

Wow.turned out beautiful.congratulations

A m a z i n g!!!!!!!

WOW...You get the 'patience of the year' award.

BEAUTIFUL! I can't imagine quilting this on a domestic.

Beautiful quilt! I bet at 15 lbs. she won't be "tossing and turning" too much underneath it though.