I know quilts are not the normal type of thing we review on here, but when the opportunity to review the Reflections Quilt I decided to go for it. I have only ever made rag quilts before, but I’ve wanted to make a real quilt for a while. I just never seem to find the time. I figured with a deadline, I would be sure to get it on time. Although I quickly learned that a quilt is a lot more time consuming than I thought! Especially because I decided to go big and make a king size quilt as my first quilt. If I’m going to put all the time and effort into this, I want to be able to enjoy it and have it fit my bed!

The quilt top came together pretty quickly. It took me a whole lot longer to cut the pieces out than it did for me to sew it together. The cool thing about this quilt is that the top half is the same as the bottom half, and then the two halves are sewn together. There is a chart and instructions in the pattern that tells you which pieces to sew together to form larger pieces, and then when to sew the larger pieces together. It’s like a big puzzle, and labeling the pieces with some tape helped me a LOT!

Once I got the quilt top sewn up, I had to baste it all together with the backing, the batting, and the top. Finding a space large enough to lay it all out was a bit tricky, but with rearranging some furniture I got it to work. I used the 505 Basting Spray as well as some large safety pins to put it together. Then I decided to quilt it on my home machine. Since this was all new to me anyways, I decided to play around with the quilting and do each fabric differently. Some I did straight lines, others were wavy lines. Then I decided to try free motion quilting using a darning foot. You Tube became my best friend, as I watched several different videos to learn how to do it. It definitely would have been a lot easier if I actually had a long arm quilter, but since I didn’t, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to try it on my home machine. This took me several days to finish. It’s not perfect, but it’s for me, and I enjoyed it. I decided it is like doodling with needle and thread. One of my favorite parts is to look at the back and see all the different designs. It just makes me smile.

The last part was the binding of the quilt. I don’t hand sew much, but I decided to hand sew the binding to the back of the quilt to make it look nice. It was actually pretty relaxing to sit and sew it on, although my fingers started to hurt after a while. I used some Dritz finger grips after a couple days and that helped a lot.

Overall I am extremely pleased with how it turned out! It was definitely a lot of firsts, and there are plenty of mistakes in there, but that is part of the charm. I felt so accomplished when I finally finished it. I’m grateful this pattern pushed me out of my normal sewing habits and encouraged me to try something new! It was great for a beginner like me, and I actually want to try another quilt one day. Just maybe not when I have a deadline! I can definitely see why it can take several months or more to make a quilt, and why they sell for so much!

You can find more from The Modern Prairie Girl on Etsy HERE or check out the project book below.