The shirting quilt

In honor of Peter's men's shirt sew-along, here are some photos of the recently finished shirting quilt. It's a basic nine patch pattern with ivory flannel sashing between the blocks. There are 12 shirting fabrics in brown and blue. Most were upcycled from men's shirts and a few fabrics came from Happy Stop in Oakland, where the hit-or-miss inventory is $2 per yard.

I wanted something quick, warm and comfortable, but it turns out that nothing queen-sized is ever quick. The warm and comfortable bits came out as planned.

It's backed with a double layer of flannel. The quilting is a wide-spaced plaid in tan and navy.

I posted the hand embroidered label before, back when I had just started to finish the binding by hand. After letting it languish for a few weeks I decided to machine-stitch the binding, which ended up being something of a disaster. My plan was to stitch in the ditch on the front of the binding (that is, run the thread along the edge of the binding so that it is almost invisible), catching the edge of the plaid fabric on the back. Perhaps because of the fluffy double layer of flannel backing, I had the hardest time catching the binding on the back and had to sew over most of the edge two and three times. The short cut turned out to be a lot more work than I had bargained for. Thankfully this quilt was never about precision and detail.