Made With Oakshott - Amy

Hello - I am Amy from [Amy's] Crafty Shenanigans.  Back in May I was sent some delicious Oakshott Herringbone weave fabrics.  As Lynne stated on her blog, these fabrics "are the weight of quilting cottons, soft like old denim and have a slightly different shade on the reverse side"- and she was right!  These are super soft and totally reversible fabrics!

I suggested that I would like to make a 'Plaid' quilt using these fabrics. Utilising both sides of the six fabrics, I was able to get twelve colours.  To me, this means you can have twice as much fun using them and have twice as many possibilities.  To make the 'plaid', I flipped the fabrics to show the different shades.  Where fabrics 'crossed' each other, I tried to show what colour could be created.  Yes, perhaps a little imagination is required!

There is a fantastic website where you can search a register of hundreds of different tartan patterns by name or colour or even by colour combinations.  I searched for a tartan with similar colours to the yummy Oakshott Herringbone weave fabrics and sketched out my design.  Using some pencil crayons to give me a guideline, I started cutting.  Because the fabrics can be flipped, I did try several different possibilities to create the plaid that I liked best.  The end result is a simple and symmetrical quilt that represents tartan, or what I call plaid.
 

The darker blue fabric has a subtle variation of colour on its reverse so in the photo you do not see much difference.  However, in person you can see the difference more clearly.  They really are wonderful fabrics and best seen and felt in person!  Here are my cutting dimensions [in inches] for the squares and rectangles:

A = 8.5 x 8.5
B = 8.5 x 4 (and 4 x 8.5)
C = 8.5 x 3 (and 3 x 8.5)
D = 4 x 4
E = 3 x 4
F = 3 x 3

I pre-washed the fabrics and used colour catchers and a product called Synthrapol(R) to prevent any colour bleeding.  For my seam allowance, I stitched at just a little more than the typical 1/4" and used some spray starch to help me to keep the soft fabrics straight when I stitched them together.  The finished quilt is approximately 40 x 56 inches.

For the back, I used Kona silver which looks like it has a slight purple hue to it which compliments my quilt front.  I used several shades of Perle cotton, Aurifil 50 and Gutermann threads to do some 'straight' stitching both by hand and by machine to give a more 'plaid' appearance.  You can really see the stitches on the back - I can't wait to wash and dry this to see the crinkly textures created.   

Thank you Lynne and Michael of Oakshott for letting me play with these gorgeous fabrics.