Whole Cloth Baby Quilt

As a quilter my eyes are frequently drawn to designs around me for use in my quilts. Perhaps, in a way similar to a photographer who’s always on the lookout for a photo opportunity. This month I found a quilting design on toilet paper of all things! Some companies even go so far as to call it quilted TP with all the different designs on it. Well, the ones we buy have pretty flowers “quilted” on it, so I thought I would try and mimic this flower design on a quilt. 

I decided to make a whole cloth quilt to showcase the flower motif. You might be new to the quilting world and wonder what I am talking about. A whole cloth quilt is simply what the name says: a quilt made out of a whole piece of fabric instead of pieced fabrics. It still consists of the quilt sandwich - top, batting and backing. And in this case it’s reversible.
 
While this is certainly different from a regular patchwork quilt, it is still beautiful with the focus, in my opinion, on the quilting design, whether you choose to hand or machine quilt.
 
Since this was the first time I attempted a whole cloth quilt, I decided to keep it small and make a baby size quilt. With spring in mind, as well as the flowery TP, I went to my local fabric store and bought a white muslin for the one side and a white polka-dot on peach cotton fabric for the flip side. For the binding I chose a pretty peach fabric with small white and black flowers. I figured the quilt design would be more visible on light colored fabrics.

I started drawing out the flower design in one corner of the white fabric with a water soluble fabric marker and continued doing that all over the white. Then I layered the quilt the same way I would have done with a patchwork quilt. After that I started quilting in white thread.

While making this quilt, I learned a few valuable lessons:
 

1. Planning is key! Decide on the size quilt you want to make and buy enough fabric accordingly. Since it is called a whole cloth quilt you might need to buy extra wide fabric.
2. Plan and measure out the quilting design as well as the spacing in between the designs. I just started drawing the design on one side and didn’t space it out over the whole piece of fabric.  Rookie mistake!
3. I should have quilted the flowers closer to each other or perhaps added another design in between the flowers. I ended up with some “loose” fabric in between flowers. Another rookie mistake.
   
4. The flower design was very time intensive to quilt. It would have been faster to use free motion quilting, but I chose to quilt with a walking foot.