A King Size Quilt made from Vintage Sheets

This was an accomplishment for me. I had entirely forgotten just how dramatically large a king size quilt was. This one is approximately 110 by 108 inches. For almost two weeks, my life was consumed my sewing up this king size quilt. My quilts are usually gradual, but I had pushed my timeline down to the wire while I waited for the exhaustion and nausea of first trimester to pass again.

The piecing went relatively quickly. The basting process, my friends, was a borderline nightmare. My husband and I both were covered in dust and lint after so much basting spray. We had to baste the quilt in sections since we didn’t even have open floor large enough to even lay out this entire quilt.

You know what though? I’m glad I finished it. Thankfully this quilt was for a customer. Otherwise, I’m not sure I would have finished it. 🙂 Finished work…hard and monotonous work…almost always ends in joy and reward. Boy was it nice to finish the last stitch of binding on this one.

I take a number of commissioned quilts a year. I don’t do too many, and I have very little rhyme or reason to when I agree to take one. It all just depends on how busy life feels at the time a customer requests a custom order.

This particular customer asked about a king size quilt, and I unhesitatingly agreed to sew one. What’s a couple more rows of blocks and a bit more backing?

I had sewn an oversized queen quilt for our bed at home, but I’m not sure I’d ever sewn or handled a blanket as large as this king size quilt. The sheer effort it took to just handle this quilt almost wore me out. I finally requested some help from my husband in the evenings while I was finishing up the straight line quilting. Him and I would roll it up on the floor and then haul it to the sewing machine. Sometimes I felt like we were moving a 2 by 4 piece of wood. It’s so long and heavy!

I cut 6 1/2 blocks for this project. After sewing them together and considering seam allowances, the finished blocks are 6 inches by 6 inches. The quilt is 18 rows by 19 rows. I used a variety of blue, pink, yellow, and white vintage sheets.

It wasn’t until I had strip pieced a number of blocks that I realized that my stash of vintage sheets was not going to go the distance. Thankfully I found two duplicates for sale online in great condition. It slowed down my project a bit as I waited for them to come in the mail, but I was still immensely thankful I could finish the project with the original vision I had in mind.

The backing is a combination of five different sheets. One of the biggest disadvantages of using vintage sheets is the lack of perfection in their quality. It’s what makes them vintage, but it makes it hard to cut around the imperfections.

The backing is made up of the largest sections of the vintage sheets where there are no flaws. Please understand, though, that I use the flaws in the vintage sheets as long as I feel the flaws don’t compromise the project as a whole or the aesthetic appeal.

I never use pieces with holes or where I believe the sheet has worn too thin. I do sometimes leave in faint spots that I feel are overly unnoticeable. I know after a quilt has been washed and dried a few times, some of these inadequacies are so irrelevant that I attempt not to stress.

My quilting is never perfect either. There are times my quilting puckers at the corners, and there are plenty of times my corners don’t perfectly line up. But, like I mentioned, a trip through the washer and dryer covers a multitude of imperfections. Plus, my projects are hand made. They’re not going to be perfect. My projects all have their own amount of character. 🙂

Would I sew a king size quilt again?

I had to learn somehow that they’re almost too inconvenient to handle. This was my time to learn. I’m glad I took on this project, and I’m really glad it’s finished and shipped off to it’s new home.