A mushroom quilt?

Mushroom Quilt

54" x 66"

Started Feb. 9, 2023

Finished Feb 19, 2023
For Jenica Danielson

During a lunchtime meal at LivingWell, Jenica made a comment that she would love a quilt.

Although I told her that I wasn't committing to making a quilt for her, I continued to feel prompted that I should.

I asked her what type of quilt she wanted.

She said she loved mushrooms and wanted that. A mushroom quilt was never on my radar as a possibility, and I wondered how I would go about making mushrooms.

I searched Pinterest and found a variety of quilts with mushroom blocks, gnomes, and some forest and fauna images. She picked a few she liked.

She said that she also liked a simple patchwork design and that was what she was leaning toward. 

I invited her over to my house the following Saturday. We perused some different fabrics with mushrooms on them that I had found online. She settled on a pattern that had orange mushrooms on a black background and the same mushrooms on a cream background.

Next, we found some flannel mushroom fabric I found on sale at Joann's. It was off-white with little groupings of mushrooms.

Fabric found for the back

After ordering the fabric online, I waited in anticipation for it to arrive. Within a week, my mailbox was full of Jenica's fabric.

The Joann's fabric had been cut and arrived in 2 pieces so it had to be pieced together into 2 columns with one column having extra piecing.  Miraculously, although pieced, the mushrooms matched up.

I went to work cutting out the squares. Before I knew it, I had the entire project cut out. Before cutting, I refolded the fabric cut edge to cut edge rather than selvage to selvage. I cut the fabric 6 1/2" wide, and sewed the panels into strips of two. I sewed a black on the left and a white on the right for one group, and then sewed a white on the left and a black on the right for the next group.

Then I cut them again the opposite way (6 1/2" wide) making sure that the mushrooms were all going the same direction. (Similar to how I made the snowflake quilt blocks).

Jenica was away on vacation, but I sent her a preview shot of how the quilt was shaping up.

Her comment when she saw the photo - "Oh my gosh!!! It is so cute! I just showed my family, and they all love it!!! It looks like the mushrooms are popping off the quilt, it's super trippy and awesome!"

Her words made me laugh.

Within one day, the entire quilt top was finished. Although we had determined that the quilt would finish at 48" x 54", I had extra fabric and felt it should be larger.  I added an extra column and two extra rows. (Instead of 8 x 9 blocks, I made a layout of 9 x 11 blocks).

Because the fabric was directional and I had added 27 blocks, I did have to piece 3 of the blocks. But once the quilting was done, you really couldn't tell the blocks were pieced. I placed them in the layout so they would be the least noticed within the quilt.

When Jenica returned to work, I showed her some samples of how I might quilt it. It was decided that I would meander using gold thread. 

I also brought in some samples of what she might like for the binding (gold, yellow, black, or orange). She chose the golden fabric for the binding. 

The following weekend, I finished all of the quilting and did the binding by hand.

Jenica's response to the finished quilt, "It's so beautiful! I can't believe you finished it so quickly."

She brought it into the work lunch room and showed it off to everyone. She even liked the larger size and was happy that it was larger than originally planned.

Every quilt tells a story. This is the story of making a "trippy" mushroom quilt for a co-worker over two weekends.

Every Quilt Tells A Story
Whether it is the fabrics chosen, the design, the colors, the occasion, the recipient, or the people I quilt with, every quilt tells a story. This blog captures in images and words what has been created for others and for my own home through the hum and stitching of my sewing machine.