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loisflan

Marimekko scrap Chinese Coin quilts

loisflan
10 years ago

I'm making two of these for my great-nieces. They are the sweetest girls. They live on the north end of Manhattan Island and share a bedroom. I thought these would be fun for their bunk beds. I hope they're into bright colors. I'm binding and backing one in orange and one in yellow to match blankets that my mother knit for them when they were born.

I still have some Marimekko scraps left, but I'm pretty burned out on them after making my king quilt and now these two. Time to let them rest.

Comments (11)

  • littlehelen_gw
    10 years ago

    Lois,
    I just love those bright colors on the white and your backing colors are ideal! These are perfect for two girls sharing a room!
    V.

  • K8Orlando
    10 years ago

    Love those fabrics and that pattern is perfect for them!

  • geezerfolks_SharonG_FL
    10 years ago

    What's not to like about brights and white? It looks to be the right thing for the girls, Lois. And, if you aren't careful, you're going to have a stash of scraps and be able to make some crumb blocks. :-)

    SharonG/FL

  • day2day
    10 years ago

    I think the quilts will be a hit!
    The bright colours sparkle with the white sashings.
    Great job.
    TFS.

    ~Geraldine

  • jennifer_in_va
    10 years ago

    Love the brights!!! Well done!

  • quiltingfox
    10 years ago

    They are very bright and vivid with wide array of colors so they are bound to coordinate with most anything they have in their rooms already. Beautiful quilts. TFS.

    Best to you,
    Sandra

  • calliope
    10 years ago

    I'm not the biggest fan of brights, but those are just perfect and work so well in the format in which you used them. The kids should love them.

  • magothyrivergirl
    10 years ago

    I LOVE Brights and I just knew Chinese Coins was the perfect choice to use up those gorgeous scraps! I always find it amazing how different the large prints look cut up into smaller pieces. This quilt looks modern and up to date - your g'nieces are going to love them. Your piecing looks wonderful.
    How are you going to quilt them?

  • loisflan
    Original Author
    10 years ago

    Marsha, I'll have them quilted by my LAQ in a panto that I've used on another similar quilt - Beach Glass. The panto has lots of concentric circles to offset the angular lines of the quilts, and the pattern is fairly dense to strengthen the tops with all the seams.

    I used a method that Weeks and Ringle suggested for keeping long pieced strips running straight. They suggest that, instead of cutting the long white background strips at 3.5" wide (which can stretch easily when you piece them), you sew the pieced colored strips to wider pieces of the background fabric and then trim the background to 3.25". I actually used the whole WOF. So every time I sewed a pieced strip to the background and trimmed it, my WOF background piece got narrower. When I had all my colored strips attached to a piece of background fabric, I sewed them together. Then I trimmed the top and bottom of the quilt. The result was a perfectly rectangular quilt top, which always makes me happy and seems impossible.

  • magothyrivergirl
    10 years ago

    I like that concept (method) of attaching the long strips. Did you sew on lengthwise or crosswise grain? In other words - if your color strips are more than 40" in length, you would have to sew along the length (selvage). Did you measure the colored strip and attach to the exact length of the white? -- like attaching a border? I can see where this would keep the color strips from bowing! Thanks!
    I think that quilting will work nicely-can't wait to see the finished quilts.

  • loisflan
    Original Author
    10 years ago

    I sewed along the selvage (after I trimmed it off, of course). The long colored strips varied in length because of the random nature of the widths of the different fabric scraps. They were about 1.5 - 4" wide. I just kept adding until they got to about 80". I cut the white WOF background piece at 82". I find that when you piece a long strip with tons of seams, it's really hard to measure it accurately. It's always longer than it measures. I press carefully while I'm sewing it to the background, making sure I don't open any of the seams. After I sew the colored strip to the white fabric, I press again and then measure from the vertical seam to the width of background fabric I want and then trim. When all the colored strips have a background piece attached, I sew them all together and add one more background piece to form the border on the unbordered edge. Then I fold the top in half, top to bottom, and measure and cut through both layers, making sure that every strip is long enough to reach the cut.

    I adapted another Weeks and Ringle method for use in this quilt. I wanted my colored strips to finish at 4". I had every size and shape of scrap, so I separated them into piles that were about 5", 10" and 15" in length. I then cut the scraps into varying widths. At random, I sewed three of the same length together. When all my blocks of three were finished, I cut them into 4.5" lengths, cutting one from the 5" block, two from the 10" and three from the 15". I then sewed these together randomly. When done like this, it's really hard to find a "pattern," and it looks as if you sewed each piece separately.

    I'm sure you, and everyone else, has heard more that you wanted to know about this quilt, but I really found these methods helpful.

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