I’ve shown a couple of glimpses of the Dreamweaver quilt, but haven’t said much more about it. The summer before last, in my very early quilting days, I went to Liverpool for the day with a friend. My intention was to spend most of the time in the Tate Modern there, but my friend had other ideas so we ended up “shopping” on the high street. I absolutely detest shopping so when we came upon a big Waterstones I pulled her in so that I didn’t have to keep looking at clothes. I quickly found myself in the craft section and thus began my love affair with Tula Pink. I’d never even heard of her at that point, but one of the books I leafed through was Quilts From the House of Tula Pink, and I think we know how that story ends.

There are several quilts in that book that I’d like to make, but there was absolutely no question that I’d be making the Dreamweaver quilt first, and that this one would be for no one else. As it happened, ten days later my ghetto fabric shop was having its summer sale so I spent an evening there trying to pick the twenty different fabrics I needed for this quilt. In the end, I spent about £85 on fabric that I was no more than ambivalent about.

Meh. Mehmehmeh.

The Germ opined that since this is the quilt that will be on our bed, it would make me absolutely miserable to look at it every day if I didn’t absolutely love every aspect of it, and he was absolutely right. I’ve since used most of those fabrics in other projects and I quite like them in other contexts, but there are a couple of fabrics in there that still make me cringe and this quilt would have been no more than meh had I used them.

When I went to the Festival of Quilts a couple of months later, I had a couple of goals: Christmas fabric for an advent calendar and fabric for the Dreamweaver quilt. I spent two days at the show and was absolutely delighted to meet Tula Pink that year (this was 2012, before she became the headliner in 2013).

Me and Tula Pink. Apparently selfies* make my face look twice as long as it actually is. *Hate that word, swear I’ll never use it here again. SORRY.

She signed my book and tried to convince me to buy her Prince Charming line to use in the quilt, but I confess that I love her quilt designs more than her fabric (though I adore Saltwater and the newest line that just came out at Market this week–Fox Field–looks amazing), so I gently rebuffed the suggestion and kept looking. I roamed those halls for two days and didn’t settle on anything until the last hour of the show, when I accosted the poor ladies at the Doughty’s batik stand. Those poor, poor ladies. They were absolutely exhausted after four days on their feet and there I was, bouncing about pulling bolts and asking them what they thought. They were, nonetheless, delightfully kind and helped me come up with the twenty different fabrics I needed. So I spent another £85 or so, but I knew that this was it–I absolutely loved these fabrics.

And then nearly six months went by before I got started. Last Christmas we drove to Germany for Christmas (funny story–as I was driving on the horrid bumpy roads in Belgium I pictured us arriving into Germany with nothing but the chassis left. Luckily, this didn’t happen, since the car broke down in Holland and we had to be towed into Germany) and since I had ten days to get through without much English and without the Internet, I took the sewing machine with me and got the quilt top cut and pieced. It came together quickly and beautifully, turning from a fabric stash to a finished king-sized quilt top in two days.

Chop chop!

I find these leftover strips really endearing. I think I have a photo like this for every quilt I’ve made.

Then I sat on it for another few months, until a weekend in April when I pieced the back, basted, and quilted the whole thing. Have I mentioned this thing is HUGE? Sheleg popped in to supervise. The back is mostly off-white, with three strips of the twenty fabrics in the order they appear in the front, each a different width. The quilting is simple vertical straight-line stitching.

That’s a bit crooked, don’t you think?

A week or two later I took it with me to the Yorkshire Dales for a proper photoshoot.

On the grass.

On the fence.

On the fence some more.

And on the fence still some more.

She was right. It was crooked.

And now that it’s been on our bed for about six months, not a day goes by where I don’t look at it and delight in how much I love it.

On the bed.

Linking this one over at Blogger’s Quilt Festival under the Roy G. Biv category, where I stand no chance of winning, because have you SEEN what I’m up against? I am awed, quilters–AWED!