"Bowtie" Completed Quilt

Here is the completed “Bowtie” quilt from the book, Just One Charm Pack Quilts. The quilting is really simple. I quilted the grid of squares and then quilted the diagonal lines of the triangular pieces in the blocks. It has a polyester batting so this modest amount of quilting will allow the quilt to be light and a bit puffy.

What’s on the back? That’s were this story gets interesting. Years ago…and I mean years, maybe 10-15!, I purchased a cheater*quilt fabric. The problem was, the blocks in the cheater print are only one inch square! That is way too small to use as blocks to practice quilting. Might have made a quilt for a tiny doll. But I had two yards of it. So, despite the fact that I liked the bold colors and the design, it languished in the bottom of a bin of stash fabrics.

Hunting around for a backing for this quilt, I saw this fabric in the bin and realized it echoed the colors and character of this quilt. This old friend was suddenly the perfect backing for my new quilt. What do you think?

*The design of quilt fabrics is a completed quilt top printed on the fabric.

Here is “Field Puzzle”, a cheater quilt fabric to which I added blocks, making it more of my own. And “Storybook Houses”, a panel I designed, which makes a fun which that would have been really challenging to piece.

"Bowtie": Two Different Diagonal Chains Make This Quilt Top

This lap sized quilt pattern is called “Bowtie” in the Just One Charm Pack Quilts book by Cheryl Brickey. This isn’t a traditional bowtie pattern, which has a small block between the two triangles and really looks like a bowtie a gentleman might wear. This pattern is a modern variation of the bowtie.

If you squint at this pattern, you’ll realized it is actually 2 parallel sets of chaining blocks. One chain has the navy blue squares and the other has larger off-white squares. It’s a fun design and I love this quilt!

There were a lot of ways that assembling this quilt could go awry, so I tediously sewed it together removing 2 blocks at a time from my design wall. When I had all the strips of blocks assembled, I put it on the floor to check it. Wise decision! Do you see what I saw?

Can you spot the layout error?

Whew! One four patch block rotated a quarter turn. I’d have been one sorry camper if I’d merrily assumed everything was just fine and sewed all the strips together. That error would have been “buried” near the center of the quilt. But, happily, I was able to unpick the two seams holding that block, rotate it to it’s correct position, and sew in back in place.

I once made a similar error that was in a very complex queen sized quilt. I didn’t even notice it when the quilt was all done….but a friend who is has an eye that picks out variations in patterns noticed it right away. Undoing it was unthinkable, and because it doesn’t stand out to my eyes, I happily left that error in place.

If I hadn’t picked up the rotated block in this quilt before I sewed all the strips together, I’d either have been really annoyed, or thought it was a worth a good chuckle. Since that didn’t happen, I can tell you which reaction I’d have had!

I’m trying to decide if I’m done, or if I’m going to add one or more borders. As is, it will fit on a 42 inch wide fabric backing without the need for any piecing. That makes stopping at this size a very viable option! And I think it will look really crisp with just the addition of a navy blue binding.

I wonder if I have anything in my stash that will do for a backing….