Simple Geometric Quilting - the New Mexico Quilt

It's been a long time since I've logged in to this blog, and if I'm honest, a long time since I've read any blogs.  I would like to get back to blogging a bit more as I still enjoy reading sewing and quilting blogs but I've yet to find a good blog-reader app for my phone so I just tend to stick to Instagram most of the time. I thought I'd return to this blog and document the rest of my quilt makes for 2021 in the hope that it encourages me to get back into it again. Starting with this one I made back in the early summer for my husband's sister in Scotland.  

New Mexico Quilt

The pattern is the New Mexico Queen quilt pattern from Simple Geometric Quilting by Laura Preston. It is such a beautiful book and I would love to try out all the patterns and techniques.  The photography is wonderful as well and just makes me want to travel - which, with the way things are going right now looks likely to stay as daydreaming for a while longer! I reduced the size of the pattern by a third to make it more of a lap quilt but it's still pretty big as you can see.  

The colour scheme in the book is so good and it's one that I thought my sister-in-law would really like so I stuck pretty close to the sample in the book.  The two blues are both Cirrus solids, absolutely my favourite solids to use as the texture is just gorgeous.  These were from MisforMake and FineCityQuilting. The terracotta was my last scraps of an April Rhodes fabric, the white is also from MisforMake I think, their standard cotton. I can't remember what the black fabric is but it's lovely.  The backing is a Habitat duvet cover that wasn't being used, it's Egyptian cotton and so lovely and soft - perfect for a quilt backing. 

The instructions for this were really clear and I like the way the book is laid out.  It has you press all the seams open rather than to one side and I did follow that but I don't think I will be again. I found once I'd pressed open that some of the stitching came loose. It happened more than once and I wondered if it was related to the fact I was chain piecing but then the instructions recommend both chain piecing and pressing seams open so there must be a way to do it without stitches coming loose.  If anyone has any tips or suggestions for this then I'd be interested in hearing them.  For now though I'll just go back to pressing to one side.