A red and white shoofly quilt for my valentine

I finished my first full-sized quilt earlier this month! I made this one as a (belated) Valentine’s Day gift for Kiyana; she asked if I’d make her a red and white quilt (a very common combination, historically!), and shoofly quilts are supposed to be fairly easy and beginner-friendly.

Pattern: Penelope Handmade (though this one is no longer available)

Fabric: Kona cotton in tomato, AGF Studio in creme de la creme, and starfall satellite tan yardage (for the backing)

To be honest, this particular quilt felt a little cursed—a bunch of things went wrong/were annoying, but in the end, it was all fine! I’m happy with how it turned out, and I learned a ton when working on it, which I’m currently applying to my second go-round with this pattern.

One of my biggest takeaways was that I should put on music if I’m struggling with a particular step. I generally don’t have music on when I’m doing stuff around the house (I kind of just…forget that it’s an option?) but I was fighting for my goddamn life when I was quilting this. (The difference between quilting something small and something large is…significant!) Then I remembered that there was music playing when I went to “social sewing” hours at my local quilt store—a fun mix of ‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s. With that in mind, I started blasting oldies (beginning with the Now & Then soundtrack…perfect, honestly) and it helped so much! My lines still came out pretty wobbly, but I felt much less stressed the entire time. I’ve since made a full playlist that I will be utilizing when I quilt my second shoofly this weekend.

Kiyana loves the quilt, which is all that matters…but no one loves it more than Valentina.

I actually ended up teaching Kiyana to sew a couple weeks ago, and she used the leftovers from this quilt to make some shoofly blocks of her own, which she then turned into a dog coat—her first project.

So now Valentina has a quilt of her own to wear (but still prefers ours, naturally). 🧵