Work in Progress: Chinese Coins Quilt Top

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When my daughter had her wisdom teeth out last week, she wanted to spend every waking minute in my sewing room with me so I could provide comfort and watch her favorite TV shows with her. I wanted to make her Christmas present (leopard-print fleece pajama pants) but couldn’t, because she was right there on the sofa, watching my every move.  Instead, I filled the time by making my first-ever Chinese Coins quilt.

This Chinese Coins quilt top used  one white print for the sashing and borders, plus  a lot of strips cut from my stash of fat quarters. In the early days of my fabric addiction, I bought a lot of fat quarters just because I loved their patterns and colors. Since then, I have found that I really prefer to quilt with width-of-fabric strips. Some of the fat quarters that went into this quilt have been sitting neglected on my fabric shelf for years. Now I am ruthlessly cutting them up into strips and using them to make scrap quilts. It’s very satisfying to make inroads on my unused fabric.

To sew the “coin” strips together, I started with a foundation fabric of long muslin strips. I added strips to the foundations using the same stitch-and-flip technique I use to make string quilts. You could also just sew the strips together without a foundation, but I like having the muslin to tell me exactly how long and how wide the strip set needs to be. Here’s a view of the strips before I added sashing and borders.

I went fabric shopping the day after Christmas and found some fabulous Minkee fabric to use as the backing for this quilt. You’ll get to see that when the quilt is finished (soon, I hope!)

The leopard-print pajamas got done late at night, after everyone else went to bed. They were a big hit!