Plain Spoken
I have found that I enjoy having quilts stay at my house instead of always being given as gifts. And this one not only gets to stay at our house, but at the foot of our bed so I can look at it every day.
It is the Plain Spoken Pattern from the The Modern Quilt Workshop. It was my very first quilting book I bought and I am so glad they put modern in the title so that a novice like me would add it to her amazon shopping cart years ago.
In the book they say the key to the pattern is the number of solids you include-the more the better. I believe this one has 20 something different Kona solids in it.
It is twin sized and when it is folded it fits long ways across our king size bed. I went with an analogous color scheme to fit our master bedroom and I am thrilled how it turned out.
The next time I put one together though (and there will be a next time) I think I will go with a more complementary scheme. Which is one of the things I love about this quilt design…you could take it in so many ways.
I think I am going to call the The Itch. It is super soft but I decided it would be our seven year anniversary quilt. I thought about being cute and putting seven shapes on the back to symbolize the seven years of wedded bliss, but then changed my mind as I could not decide the placement and frankly I was running out of fabric. And time. So solid back it was.
On top of having this to keep us warm all summer long, a bonus to this quilt was Weeks Ringle, one of the authors of the book, came to speak to the Kansas City Modern Quilt Guild a couple of weeks ago. She was a great speaker and brought many amazing pieces that she let us pass around. And I got to show off my Plain Spoken to her along with others who had completed one of her patterns. It was super exciting as showing off your quilt to the author of the pattern does not happen everyday.
And for those out there who were wondering what impetus I had to finish this quilt, I would like to say that I was self-motivated as there was no looming baby shower. But no, you are correct, I was binding like a mad woman the night before Weeks got here. Full disclosure.
A twin is by far the largest quilt I have made thus far and while I need to get better at my basting and quilting technique as well as allow more time for binding, it did not take as long as I thought it would and I happy that I was able to tackle a larger project.
Which is good because someone is going to need a quilt for his big boy room you know…