A Hand-quilted Bed Quilt

A Forsaken Bed Quilt

About a decade and a half ago, long before I got the Bag Bug and embarked on my sewing adventure, I decided to make bed quilts for each of my children. I purchased three packs of twin-sized cotton batting, and thought it would be nice if I could finished the quilts before my kids, all quite young at the time, went to college. Wishful thinking indeed.

A couple of years after that ambitious purchase, I sewed a quilt top for my middle daughter.  She was in first or second grade at the time, and loved purples and pinks. I composed a simple composition of rectangles in said colors, with a border all around, and even sandwiched and basted it with safety pins in preparation for the actual quilting, which I planned to do on my newly-purchased sewing machine. I bought matching sewing thread for that very purpose, in variegated purples, no less. If I’m not wrong, I was planning to add some applique at a later stage.  

That’s where it got stuck. Perhaps life happened, or maybe I just got distracted for some reason. Either way, I shoved that quilt into a closet, where it languished in the dark for years.

I didn’t exactly forget about it. It’s just that I couldn’t make myself get to it. I knew it would take a long time to quilt, and I had other things to do. The guilt was always there, however. The guilt of a bad mother who doesn’t finish her daughter’s quilt…

In the meantime, my middle daughter kept growing up, and soon stopped loving purples and pinks. 

During the COVID pandemic, when I took out all of my unfinished projects to finish, I pulled out that quilt, too. But while I finished all other fifty-something UFOs, I left the bed quilt untouched.

The pandemic ended. Life went on. My eldest daughter went to college without a quilt. Her sister followed suit soon after, quiltless as well. That motherly guilt weighed heavy. Not to mention that the unfinished quilt was now taking lots of precious space in my sewing room… 

Finally, last winter, I had enough.

I love stitching in the rain. In the winters of 2023 and 2024 I stitched the Yaacov’s Algae series and enjoyed every minute. Last winter, However, I had no hand stitching project lined up. Therein comes the bed quilt. It was exactly what I needed! A large piece of fabric in need of stitching. Lots and lots of stitching.

In contrast with the original intention, I now decided to stitch this quilt entirely by hand, with simple lines of running stitch in different thread colors and weights. I even bought a nice selection of matching pearl cotton for that very purpose. 

And so, when the rains started falling, I set up a hand-stitching station in my daughter’s room, and sat down to stitch.

The Process

I began at the center of the quilt, as I learned to do in the very first beginner quilting class I took over two decades ago. I used the variegated purple sewing thread I originally bought for this very purpose, and stitched-in-the-ditch along the seams. When the entire quilt was stabilized that way, I started stitching rows of running stitch on the rectangles, proceeding, again, from the center outwards.

I am not used to working with bed quilts. The sewing station I set up in my daughter’s room initially included a folding table and a chair. Every time I finished a row, I turned the entire quilt to the other side, so I could start stitching the next row. This was burdensome, and took forever. Eventually, I had an epiphany. I brought in another chair and put it across from the first:

Now, whenever I reached the end of the row, I moved myself to the other side! This saved a lot of time and hassle (and made me get up and move, which is always a good thing!).

When I reached the borders, which required very long rows of stitches, I saved myself more time (and moving) by pulling several threads with several needle in one direction at the same time 🙂

Here are a couple of detail pictures. I love the way that hand stitching changes the texture, and the resulting play of light and shadow:

I spent the entire winter of 2025 stitching this bed quilt, which is one reason why my output of art quilts is so low this year. It was well worth the sacrifice, however, as I enjoyed the process very much. I felt absolutely wonderful when I finally finished the quilt, some 15 years too late. Of course, by the time I completed the task my middle daughter was already a college senior, and in no need of a purple and pink quilt. Still, it’s hers for the taking, if she ever wants it.

This is a simple quilt. I didn’t end up adding any applique or such. I probably would have planned it differently were I to start fresh now. But, like PhD dissertations, a finished quilt is better than an unfinished one, and this quilt is finally finished.

I still have two twin-sized battings to go. I’m thinking of starting a kawandi this winter, maybe for my eldest daughter. Now I just need to wait for the holidays to pass, for festivities to end, for the kids to return to their respective schools and for the rains to start falling…