You know that fabric that is too gorgeous to cut into? I had a lot of it. Mostly from Maureen Cracknell’s Autumn Vibes fabric collection. I kept pulling it for a project, getting ready to cut into it, and then being like “nope, can’t do it”. The fabric just has gorgeous designs that are big and if you cut them up you do NOT do them justice. So I started looking for a pattern with big pieces to do the fabric justice, and then I saw Tales of Cloths new Rosemary Quilt and knew it was perfect.
In 2019 Jodi Godfrey from Tales of Cloth released ‘The Seedlings Quilts’ book. While the book has many gorgeous patterns, I narrowed in on the Rosemary Quilt for my gorgeous fabric with big designs.
I bought the book from amazon and the paper pieces directly from Tales of Cloth. She is based in Australia so shipping to the US is a bit of a pain, but she has the BEST paper pieces so it is worth it. These pieces are durable with the perfect Goldilocks amount of bend to them. They are also made of recycled paper and they come in environmentally friendly packaging, which makes me extra happy.
The pattern actually calls for more fat eighths than I had a fat quarters for the Autumn Vibes collection. I needed even more fabric too because I enlarged the pattern by one row and one column to make the quilt bigger. I ended up supplementing my Autumn Vibes collection with other fat quarters knowing I would only end up using about half the fabric on all of them. The leftovers will find a new life purpose at a later date.
I cut out the rectangle blocks according to the book. I paired up fabrics and cut and basted the rosemary leaf pieces. Then I started hand sewing my rosemary leaves. Honestly, this took me months, while there weren’t many pieces and they didn’t take very long at all I had problems focusing on this project.
I had already decided on white fabric for the background of the rosemary leaf blocks so when I finished the blocks I popped out the pieces and ironed them flat. I machine appliqued all the rosemary leaves onto the white background blocks. If you look through Instagram you will see that most people hand appliqued the blocks, going back I would probably hand applique them instead of machine applique. They really aren’t that much work to had applique because there aren’t that many and I honestly do like the hand applique look better.
Laying out the blocks took some thought because I used a lot of repeating patterns and colors so it took some effort to keep it visually balanced. I finished laying out the quilt while the Autumn Vibes collection was still mostly available so I chose a large floral from the collection to back the quilt in.
Since the quilt is mostly large rectangles, the quilt top was sewn together faster than any quilt I have ever made. I think the pattern really does do the fabric justice.
Basting time.
Then the hard decisions came. What kind of quilting? Hand quilting. What design? Same as Jodi did in her book. What color thread? Mustard yellow. What weight? The thin cotton Guttermann that I had on hand. What color binding? Also, mustard. I really love mustard.
I thought I would be able to eyeball the lines and keep them straight while diagonally moving across the block. I quickly learned I could not, which was super annoying. I ended up laying the quilt across the coffee table in the living room and using a quilting ruler and a Hera marker to make lines as I hand quilted to keep things straight. It was super inconvenient. If I ever make this quilt again, I will choose a different quilting design for sure.
When I finished hand quilting I did the binding and put on the label (from Southern Charm Quilts).
This quilt is fast, easy, and perfect for those beautiful big prints.
