The Norah Quilt

My blog posts and my motivation to write lately have been far and few between, but I wanted to share with you my finished Norah quilt. When I say finished, I mean only half really because this is just the top pieced. There’s still lots of quilting and binding to go.

The quilt was designed by the lovely Sunny gals Shaw and Mary at Sunny Day Supply Company, who have an amazing online shop and one of my most favourite inspiring instagram accounts out there. They currently run a Norah quilt sew along each year (the NorahquiltSAL) where you can learn how to make a Norah quilt and share your progress and tips along the way.

The Norah quilt is a take on a cabin quilt, where instead of making up lots of smaller log cabin blocks and joining them together to make a quilt. You use one central log cabin block and continue to add rows or “logs” to make one giant log cabin. If you want to find out more about this quilt or want to make one too, you can visit the sunny day supply blog.

When making a log cabin block the only ‘rules’ are that stepped diagonal line created by the piecing should be strong and easy to distinguish, therefore there should be a clear difference in your light and dark fabrics on each side of the quilt to emphasize this. When making my Norah I played on this by choosing to have one side yellow, one pink, one aqua and the other low volume/white fabrics. Yellow, pink and aqua are my favourites, and I have so many amazing low volume prints that I wanted to include in this quilt. I have to say I think It looks amazing! Creating almost a rainbow effect.

This quilt for me was all about finally using some of my most favourite hoarded fabric in my stash. Everything from Tasha Noel to Elea lutz, Atsuko Matsuyama and so many other designers whos fabric I swoon over on a daily basis. Of course there where many others, but I don’t think there would be a quilt big enough to include them all.

Heres just a few close up of some of my favourite prints in this quilt, just kidding! They are all favourites!

Here it is hanging over the back of my sewing chair, just waiting to be basted and quilted.

And another of my amazing husband who I pestered so I could try and get a picture outside. We tried this for days, and this is the best I could come up with in the wind. I feel like it was dead calm and then as soon as I suggested we try again for a picture, the wind would pick up again.

Did I mention this was one of my all time favourite quilt tops ever to piece, and It worked up so quickly measuring in at 64” square.

I hope you find my Norah quilt inspiring, and even think about making your own too!

Happy Sewing, Kellie X.