Quilt Matters: Hudson's Bay Point Blanket Quilt

Showing posts with label Hudson's Bay Point Blanket Quilt. Show all posts

Sunday, 30 December 2012

An HBC Point Blanket Quilt Of Your Own

As I was reviewing my list of goals for 2012 the other day, I realized that I never finished sharing my Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) Point Blanket Quilt instructions. Whoops!

So without further ado, here are the complete instructions for my Canadiana quilt that I made with the traditional HBC point blanket design on the front and my 'party on the back' layout for the back. If you want to make a more true HBC point blanket quilt, just make a second top.

This will make a 90" by 90" quilt.

Fabric Requirements (NB: These are generous fabric requirements. I did not want a seam in the stripes and I knew I'd be using the colour stripes on the back too so I bought the stripe fabric for the width of the quilt):

3 - 2.5 meters (3 yards) of off-white cotton, totalling at 7.5 meters (9 yards total) of off-white cotton
2.5 meters (3 yards) indigo cotton
2.5 meters (3 yards) yellow cotton
2.5 meters (3 yards) red cotton
2.5 meters (3 yards) green cotton

Cutting Directions:

1. Fold all of your fabric so you will be cutting along the length of the fabric instead of the width. Trim off the selvedges.

2. From the off-white fabric, cut:

1 - 22.5" wide by 92" piece (top)
2 - 6.5" wide by 92" pieces (top)
6 - 4.5" wide by 92" pieces (top)
Trim one 2.5 meters panel to 94" and remove the selvedges (backing)
2 -13.5" wide by 94" pieces (backing)
3 - 4.5" wide by 94" pieces (backing)
4 - 2.5" wide by 94" pieces (binding)

3. From each of the indigo, yellow, green and red, cut:

2 - 4.5" wide by 92" (top)
1 - 4.5" wide by 94"(backing)

Layout Directions:
Top:

1. Layout your 92" stripes according to the design below, with your 6.5" off-white strips on the ends and the 22.5" piece as your centre.

2. Sew them together using a 1/4" seam allowance. Press seams open or towards the coloured fabric.

Backing:
1. Layout your 94" stripes according to this design, with your 13.5" pieces on the outside edges.

2. Sew them together using a 1/4" seam allowance. Press seams open or toward the coloured fabric. (NB: Depending on the width of fabric for your large off-white centre, the backing may be up to 8" wider than your top. You can trim it down now or wait until it's basted or quilted so that you have some flexibility when lining it up with the top. I waited until after the quilting to trim it.)

Finishing the Quilt:

1. For the basting, lay out your backing wrong side up and tack down well with masking tape.
2. Add your batting, smoothing as you go.
3. To get the backing and top stripes to be accurately perpendicular to each other, you can use your ruler. Start by rolling your top from the top and bottom edges towards the centre so that you essentially have a long, skinny double sausage. Place your double sausage in the centre of the batting/backing so that the stripes in your top will be perpendicular to the ones on the back. Slowly unroll towards the bottom, using your ruler to check that the top stripes are perpendicular to the backing stripes. I found that I could check the backing lines by gently lifting the top and batting or by feeling for the seams, working from the centre to the left, and then centre to the right. Take your time with this part.
4. Once you are happy with the line up of the lines, baste (I did pin-basting) very close together so there is no shifting.
5. Quilt as desired. I did in-the-ditch quilting along the top stripes to stabilize the quilt and then filled in with straight-line quilting about 3/8" apart in the colours that matched the top.
6. Trim to 90" by 90" and bind.

And voilà, you have your own HBC quilt. If you do make one, I'd love to see it and know if these directions are clear and easy to follow or could be improved.

Cheers and happy quilting!

Thursday, 11 October 2012

TGIFF! - Canadiana à la Hudson's Bay

Buoy in St. Andrews-
By-The-Sea,
New Brunswick

Welcome to the next TGIFF! party for OctoberQuest! Is the opportunity of winning one of two $50 gift certificates to Mad About Patchwork getting you to pull out that WIP or UFO to finish? We hope so! Also don't forget that you can also get 10% off your purchases throughout the month by using the TGIFF10 code.

My finish this week is about six months in the making, but has been on my wish list much longer. The Hudson's Bay Company's point blankets have an interesting and not-always-positive history. I had one as a child and although I loved the colours, I always found the wool too itchy. Why not try the design in a quilt?

Quick recap:

Front:

Back:

There were a couple of things that stumped me with this one, the first being that I wanted to match the thread to the colours on the front and was worried about the coloured top threads showing up on the back. Also, I was unsure how to keep the back stripes perpendicular and square to the front ones and how to keep the tight horizontal straight-line quilting from distorting the vertical stripes on the back. I hemmed and hawed, wondering if there were some tricks or techniques I could use, but ultimately I knew that I had to baste very carefully and just do it.

And done it is! Woo hoo!

Front - Canadiana

Back - Canadiana

Detail - Straight-line quilting

For the straight-line quilting in the off-white areas, I tried using a hera marker to help mark the straight line. Not successful on white or such a wide quilt. I kept losing where the line was. Once again, I forgot to use the little straight-line quilting guide that came with my walking foot. D'oh!

Distortion on
the back from
the quilting

Back - Flips on the monkey bars

Even though I did stabilize the quilt by quilting every four inches first, there were a few areas of the vertical stripes on the back that did get slightly distorted when I filled it in. Not enough to make me unpick though. It's the back after all and this quilt is going to be used until it's threadbare, stained and holey. Lesson learned: stabilize it every two or even one inch before filling in more densely.

For the colour pops of thread on the back that I worried about, I tightened the top tension just a little bit so that the top thread wouldn't show on the back -- it worked very well!

Now I have my own soft, cuddly HBC point blanket quilt! And you can too. I posted the instructions for the top back in May and I will post the material requirements and instructions for the back and binding of this quilt soon.

Now it's your turn, fine people! Link up those fab finishes, grab a glass of something fine and give thanks for the week that was.

A reminder of the rules for OctoberQuest:

Your quilty project must be completely finished (As much as we love celebrating quilt tops or completed blocks, they will not be eligible for the prizes).
You may enter more than one finish and even more than one finish each week. Just add a link for each finish to one of the linky parties. The linky parties will stay open from their start date until the end of the month.
Your post/photo on Flickr/Picasa must have a link back to the TGIFF! site and the particular party you are participating in.
Link up your quilty finish in any of the TGIFF! linky parties this month:

October 5 - Janice @ Better Off Thread
October 12 - M-R @ Quilt Matters
October 19 - Jenelle @ Echinops and Aster
October 26 - Lynette @ What a Hoot

OctoberQuest will be open until October 31st at 11:59 p.m. EST. A winner will be picked via Ms. Random Number Generator on November 1st and notified via email. Please make sure we can contact you via email or we will need to run Ms. Random again.

I'm also linking up with Sew Modern Monday at CanoeRidge Creations. Some great modern inspiration over there!

Wednesday, 4 July 2012

Works in Progress Wednesday - July 4, 2012

Fun, fun, fun week! Lots of swimming, BBQing, geocaching, hanging out with friends and family and some fireworks for Canada Day courtesy of my pyro hubster...

New Projects:
Don't Worry, {Bee} Modern Bee Blocks:
June was english paper piecing (EPP) hexie flowers for Chelsea. It took me almost the whole month to tackle these blocks as I've never done EPP before. I'm such a chicken sometimes. But they are done and were completed with about an hour to spare. They are now winging their way to Chelsea. She wanted modern/30s repro scrappy. Fingers crossed that she likes these!