Merry Christmas everyone!

I hope you had a great holiday and were properly jolly all week! I can now post something that I have been working on for a while, but couldn’t write about before, because it was a present for my sister.

A Christmas Quilt!

Because who doesn’t need a quilt with ammonites!!

But not just any quilt – my sister is a keen amateur palaeontologist and likes nothing better than scouring the beaches of the southwest looking for a good fossil. So obviously her quilt had to have some fossils on it! This quilt is a bit smaller than usual as it is a sofa throw quilt, but would suit for the end of a single bed.

A close up of the ‘ammonites’

I made the front using off cuts of old fabric pieced in a simple stripe patchwork and then used fur for the backing (because my sister’s house is quite cold and it’s snuggly). Because it’s a fossil quilt I decided to appliqué some ammonites onto the front, but I wanted the pattern to be peeping through the back as well, just like you might see if you saw a rock with a fossil in it – so I used the ammonite pattern to bind the front, back and wadding together! This did make the binding quite loose, but as it’s a small quilt that isn’t so much of a problem. Using fur for the back made the binding quite difficult and it is a bit messier around the edges than I would have liked, but she seems to like it and it will do well for her front room.

The whorl pattern of the ammonite was used to bind the quilt, giving just a hint of the ammonite pattern on the other side.

Materials I used:

3m soft brown fur (for back and hemming)

2.5m wadding (2oz)

A selection of off cuts to make a 2m x 1.5m patchwork

Green and Black threads for sewing machine (and a sewing machine to make things easier)

Contrasting colour fabric for the ammonite appliqué

Final quilt was 3m x 2.5m.

If you want more information on quilt making along with some excellent tutorials, I recommend looking at Amy Smart’s blog – Diary of a Quilter.

Happy New Year!