Cotton and Steel Herringbone Quilt … and why I will never make 120 HSTs again!

Ms Midge (aka Melissa but seriously everyone calls her Midge!) regularly hosts Charm Swaps and when I saw this one come up for Cotton and Steel – I was in!

56 people buy two fabrics, cut them into 5 inch squares, send them to Midge who sends back the 112 different squares. I had no idea what I was going to make but knew I wanted something for myself.

I searched Pinterest for ages. I’m really not a quilter (though according to Midge – now I am!) but I really wanted to do something with these that wasn’t just sewing the squares together.

So I decided on this cool herringbone pattern and teamed it with this Charcoal Shot Cotton from Spotlight (which was used by a couple of others in the Swap group).

I started with a couple and laid them out ….

Did a mountain of trimming (I was trimming the four sides as I don’t trust myself on the two side method) …

Ended up with about 120 squares (or HSTs – half square triangles). I didn’t use them all. Oh and no pinks or reds are in my quilt – I’ll make something else with those.

Decided to do a variegated pattern rather than random. Love the end result with this going from the dark blacks and navy’s on the left, the blues and greens in the middle, the neutrals and multi coloured on the right.

I know this really chopped up some of the patterns and some might say I ruined some of the charms (I couldn’t bear to chop into a couple so saved them for other projects) but I think there were a few successes too.

Little birds …

Friendly spider!

I’m tracking down some more of this charcoal shot cotton so I can add to the top of the quilt and make it a proper queen size. Then I’m going to send it off to be professionally longarm quilted. No way am I attempting this one myself.

So I will make HSTs again, I think I’m rather good at them now but seriously it will be a long time before I make this many for one quilt. Really not my favourite thing.

I’m pretty happy with the end result!!

Ms Midge

Posted by Jane from Lil Pip at 3:15 PM
Labels: Quilt, sewing for me