Sawtooth star quilt

I just checked back on my blog and the first quilt I made was in 2016 so I can't quite believe that this is me posting about the first quilt I've made for our own home, in 2018!  This quilt was made for my son's first 'big bed' and it's only actually a month late so that's not too bad going.

Sawtooth star quilt

 The idea started with the gorgeous Ray Hoekstra 'Small world' fabric for Cloud 9 fabric.  I've had this fabric since 2016 according to my blog as I used some of it to make a bag for my nephew but I can't remember where I bought it.  Sometime in 2017 I made two blocks with the 'small world' fabric just to try out the Sawtooth star block.  I never did anything with them though so this year, when I decided to make a quilt for my son, I went back to these blocks and decided to use them as the starting point.

Sawtooth star quilt block

Sawtooth star quilt block

 In addition to the 'small world' fabric I found this lovely warm yellow baby cord on the Minerva Crafts website.  They have a great sample service so I ordered a sample first to check the colour matched. The white fabric is mostly a 100% cotton sheet from a local charity shop, although the eagle-eyed among you may spot that two of the blocks have a slightly different shade of white, these were the first two blocks I made in 2017. I just used scraps of white fabric for them and unfortunately they were slightly different to the white in the rest of the quilt. The backing is a 100% organic cotton duvet cover, John Lewis via the local charity shop (so far it's been used to back 3 quilts and I still have some scraps left, not bad for £2 or £3!). I used Aurifil 50wt thread for the quilting.

Quilt backing

Close-up of quilting on the back of the quilt

The Suzy Quilts tutorial for the Sawtooth Star block is really good if you haven't made one before, or even if you had and you just want a wee reminder.  It gives you the different sizes to cut for each fabric for 4 different sized blocks. I started this way back in February and although the stars were fairly quick to put together it took a while to decide on the design, make it the size I wanted (roughly 44"x 64"), and decide how to quilt it.  The stars are 12" stars.  This quilt was sitting basted and ready to quilt for ages before I finally made a decision on the quilting.  I initially just had one diamond shape on top of each star but i decided it really needed the smaller one too to make it secure, and get the look I wanted.  When I started binding it I realised I hadn't made enough binding so had to stop again to make extra, luckily there were just enough scraps left!  I think this quilt has turned out really well, I love the colours and the design and luckily my son loves it too, and that's the most important thing.

Sawtooth star quilt

I was reading something recently (sorry I can't remember where) about handmade gifts. The post writer talked about thinking about the recipient while making the gift, about  pouring your love and admiration for that person into the gift.  That's what I think is so special about handmade gifts, and that is what I try and do when I make a quilt or any other gift for someone. All my love for my son is in this quilt and hopefully he will treasure it for years to come.

I'm trying to finish off lots of WIP (works in progress) before the end of the year, and post about them on my blog, so hopefully I'll be around here a bit more often.  Is anyone else trying to finish off projects before the end of the year?!