I reminded her that I had taught her to quilt and she was more than capable of making a bed quilt for herself, but she scoffed and said she didn't like making large quilts. I laughed, but squirreled it away because her birthday is in February and figured I could whip something up. She is widowed and sleeps on a double bed now, so it's not like it needed to be king sized, anyway.
I brainstormed quick-ish quilts and settled on a Swoon, a beautiful classic standby. But it's just a hair shy of being large enough for a double quilt at 80", and considered adding an additional row or a border. I settled on a border because adding another row of 24" blocks would have made it too long. I used mostly fabric from my stash, and picked up just a couple of fat quarters to supplement, and went with blue since it's her favorite color, and then added in some green and turquoise. I went out on a limb with those, but I really thought it would work out. For the border, I took one of the prints I had used and figured out how many strips I'd need and then divided the fabric by that number. It's only 2-1/4" wide, but that adds nearly 5" which helps a lot.
I hustled and got the quilt wrapped up after my Christmas sewing, and dropped it off to my quilter in early January. Luckily, she was able to finish it just in time. I picked it up on a Thursday, bound it on Friday, and gifted it to her on Saturday when we celebrated her birthday. I bound it with another print I had used in the quilt, which helped tie it all together. I usually bind with solids, but I didn't have enough of any that matched well enough, and I was glad to not have to buy some.
She didn't seem as surprised as I expected, but I think she really loved it. And it fits her bed perfectly. I think it was the perfect birthday gift.
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