At the end of November my daughter, Kate, was jokingly telling me that she and her partner, Nick, were fighting over the covers on their bed. Thinking that they had a queen size comforter for their queen size bed I didn't think anything of it except...who was the cover hog?! Then she proceeded to tell me that they didn't use the comforter anymore because it was too hot and they were using her quilt from her single bed (that they both loved) from when she lived at home! Clearly that quilt was too small for their current bed so I offered to make them a new one for Christmas.

The first rule of business was to choose a pattern that they both liked. I saw one in the December issue of American Patchwork & Quilting Magazine that I thought would be a good choice...not too feminine, not too masculine. Along with that quilt I showed them pictures of a couple of other quilts, but they ended up choosing “Plaid on Point” (designed by Penny Barnes) from the magazine after all.

Now on to colour choices. Their request was navy, grey and either teal or green. Since teal is one of my favourite colours I already had all the teal needed for the quilt in my stash, but did need to purchase navy for the background and my greys were pretty sparse, especially the darker shades. Off to the Ultimate Sewing Centre where I found the navy, but the greys they had in stock were exactly what I had at home. I checked 2 more stores but with no luck...Covid strikes again. So the greys from my stash just had to do even though I think they are too pale.

The quilt went together well (the instructions were very clear) and 5 extra blocks were made and navy background borders were added to make it queen size. Since I wanted to make matching pillow shams and pillowcases I had purchased enough navy for those too, as well as cording for the teal piping around the edges of the pillow shams.

My friend, Gail, was kind enough to let me use her APQS Lucey longarm machine to quilt the quilt and pillow shams so I could get this done in time for Christmas. Tracey at Whirls'n'Swirls Quilting (who’s an APQS dealer) picked out the perfect teal thread for this project and the pantograph “Calder” was purchased at her studio too. For those of you who are used to free-motion quilting on a domestic machine, quilting on a longarm is a totally different animal altogether! Since this was only my fifth quilt on the longarm I'm still a little wobbly in spots, but I'm so happy with how it turned out.

The pillowcases are navy with a narrow, flat, teal piping as an accent. Here is a good tutorial for the popular “hotdog” pillowcase if you've never made one before. The measurements I used are slightly different because I prefer a narrower accent strip (cuff 10”, accent strip 1 ¼”, body 27”), but the technique is the same. The pillow shams, quilted at the same time as the quilt, have teal corded piping and an overlap at the back where a standard pillow is inserted. There were some leftovers from the strip pieced segments of the quilt top so a section was used to make the label for the back of the quilt.

Kate and Nick are very happy with their “adulting” set of linens and shared this photo of it in place in their bedroom. It goes perfectly with the grey headboard and the gorgeous triptych over the bed that Kate painted. Since Christmas I haven't heard complaints of anyone being a cover hog now that the quilt actually fits the mattress!

Kate and Nick's Quilt