Trying new things can be scary! For most of my quilty life, I've used traditional quilting cotton. It's safe and easy, and sometimes it's nice to just go with what you know. Am I right?

 

When it was time to plan my Vintage Lace Quilt for the Second Annual Vintage Lace QAL (you can find the pattern here!), I really wanted to try something new. I had my eyes on the new Warp & Weft fabrics by Alexia Marcelle Abegg for Ruby Star Society...but honestly, I was a little intimidated by them. They are the most gorgeous yarn-dyed fabrics that are very different than your go-to cottons! Here are my impressions....

The Fabrics

Ohhhhh, the gorgeous colors. This collection is a pretty large one, so I went through and chose colors that really spoke to me. It was so hard to narrow it down! I went back and forth several times, but ultimately, I landed on these.

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"But Brittany....these are way more colors than what you need for a Vintage Lace quilt! What in the world are you doing?" Ahhh, let me tell you! Ultimately, since I couldn't narrow down my fabrics, I decided to use as many as I could, haha.

Referencing the photo above, the colors on the right hand side, from top to bottom are my Colors 1-7. They are:

• Color 1: RS4015 11 Wine Time
• Color 2: RS4009 11 Lilac
• Color 3: RS4015 12 Lavender
• Color 4: RS4012 11 Lilac
• Color 5: RS4014 16 Dahlia
• Color 6: RS4011 11 Sprinkles
• Color 7: RS4015 18 Natural & RS4010 11 Navy 

There were so many good rusty-orange colors that I couldn't choose just one....so I chose 4.

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From top to bottom, these are:

• RS4009 13 Cayenne (A)
• RS4009 12 Saddle (B)
• RS4010 13 Lavender (C)
• RS4007 12 Earth (D)

I assigned these orange tones as the background of my quilt. Initially, I was planning to just randomly place these four fabric throughout the quilt to create a sort of "scrappy" vibe; but once I received them I realized that each of the four fabrics were very different in shade.

This is when I decided to break up my background fabric into 4 different sections. I placed my darkest color, Cayenne in the center of my quilt (surrounding Colors 1-3) with the lightest shade, Earth in the negative space. It took a lot of planning and brainstorming, but I think it was worth it in the end. I love how it adds extra depth.

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The Feel

 Ya'll. I'm not going to lie, I was expecting for these fabrics to be scratchy and a bit stiff. I was so pleasantly surprised to find that they were the complete opposite. They are very soft, yet easy to work with. Each of them is slightly different, which adds SO much interest. The more solid looking fabrics are very smooth, while the Lilac that I used for Color 2 has small texturized yellow details, which is so unique.  Seriously though, I have never worked with such buttery-soft fabrics... ever! I promise that I'm not exaggerating, they feel amazing.

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The Experience

Like I said, prior to receiving with these fabrics, I was a little nervous that they'd be tricky to work with. I've sewn with some wovens in the past that were a little stretchy, thus making it difficult to have crisp seams. In this instance, there were a few fabrics that were a *smidge* tricky, but overall, they were very manageable. I feel like my piecing accuracy and quality is the same with these fabrics as it would be with regular quilting cotton. I get asked a lot if I use starch on my fabrics, I do not, and I didn't with these either.

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The lighter background color, Earth, wasn't necessarily "stretchy," but it had the tendency to get a little wonky. Ultimately, it ended up being fine, but if you're a newer quilter, and/or you are creating curves or tiny pieces, maybe consider using starch.

Another thing to be aware of: these are wovens. A few of the fabrics have more of that "woven" characteristic than others. You'll notice that when you look at the wrong side of the fabrics, there are some longer threads that weave in and out of the fabric. For these, I just made sure that those longer threads were combed down so that they'd get caught in my seam allowance. This would ensure that I'd sew over them so that they wouldn't unravel. I used a 1.8mm stitch length when piecing this quilt.

Other than that, I really didn't have any problems sewing with these. I was pleasantly surprised!

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As with all of my Vintage Lace quilts, I love love love chain piecing my rows! This speeds the pattern up SO much! You can find a tutorial for that here.

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The Quilting

I sent this off to Ashley of Hen House Quilting and she did such a phenomenal job! She used a cream color thread, along with Hobbs 80/20 batting and y'all; the texture is UNREAL.

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We used the Arris pantograph designed by Jessica Schinck, purchased from Urban Elementz, which was Ashley's suggestion. She has such a good eye, because I really love how the lines look a little like they're free-handed, yet overall, they're very organized. It adds some flow and movement to the quilt, which I think it really fun.

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The quilt already has such a lovely drape to it thanks to the fabrics, but it's even more luxurious with the quilting! I highly recommend Hen House Quilting for long arming! Truly, each stitch is perfect and the quilting design is well executed!

 

The Binding & Backing

For my backing, I used Market Floral in Peach, from Alexia Marcelle Abegg's Alma collection with Ruby Star Society. I purchased it from Hawthorne Supply. I love ordering from Hawthorne. They have such quick shipping and a MASSIVE variety of fabrics. Not to mention, you can order fabrics by the eighth yard, if you need those smaller cuts. 

Anyways, I really love this floral peach and I think it offers a nice, subtle contrast to the busy-ness of the quilt top.

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For my binding, I used up scrap pieces of fabrics from the quilt top. This is the first time that I've made a scrappy binding and it was a lot of fun!! I'll definitely do it again! PS, you can find a hand quilted binding tutorial here. It's my favorite way to bind quilts!

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 Overall, I am SO so happy with how this quilt turned out! After I washed and dried it, Peter BEGGED me to keep it. He is in love with this thing! Truly, its the softest quilt that I've ever made (and paired with my favorite pattern), it a match made in Heaven!

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Warp and Weft by Alexia Abegg for Ruby Star Society releases in April 2020! 

We have a limited supply of quilt kits to create this exact Vintage Lace quilt! The kit includes written instructions of exactly how I tweaked the pattern to create the quilt that you see above. Find the kits in our shop!

Happy quilting!

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Brittany

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All thoughts are my own. Warp & Weft fabrics were generously given to me by Ruby Star Society to use in my 2nd Annual Vintage Lace Quilt Along.