Last summer I embarked on a rather aggressive project; making a queen-sized quilt for the Murphy Bed in our new Rockwood Trailer. Since we christened her  “Rambling Rose”  it seemed appropriate to design a quilt covered in a garden of, well, rambling roses. My first step was to find the perfect embroidery pattern. After much back and forth, I found just what I was looking for on embhome.com. It is named Pearl Roses Quilt and consists of ten different patterns of beautifully designed pink roses connected by a swirling pattern of ‘pearls’ and green leaves.

These designs stitched up beautifully on my Brother PE-770 embroidery machine. I selected nine of the ten patterns and embroidered each of these nine designs a total of eleven times (yes that is 99 embroidered blocks!)  That is a lot of rat-a-tat tatting, 90 hours to be more precise! In the end the result was well worth the multiple spools of thread and stabilizer I went through. After squaring off the blocks which ended up being 7-1/2″ squares, they were assembled 9 across and 11 down, forming a quilt top of 63″ x 77″, perfect to cover the bed. After stitching the blocks together I added a 12″ solid border around three sides which will enable me to ‘box’ the corners. This is important in a Murphy Bed as it helps to hold it in place when the bed is placed in its stored position.

The toughest part was quilting such a large quilt on my sewing machine. After sandwiching the batting and flannel backing to the quilt top, I had to crawl all over it stretching and aligning, then pinning it together. My left knee complained for a day afterward! Then came the actual quilting, another test of my patience and engineering skills. I own a Husqavarna Sapphire 930 which has a wider sewing arm than my old machine but still, it was a chore moving such a bulky quilt through it. My ‘stitch in the ditch’ is not the straightest and my diamond quilting on the border leaves a lot to be desired…but knowing I did it myself is worth every crooked line and off-kilter diamond!!

The next step is to make and sew the binding. This will be made of the same material as the quilt..one because I think it will look nice and two, my mistakes will not be as noticeable. 😉 

I need to find a way to remove the chalk marks from the quilt. I hoped these would help me to sew straight quilting lines (LOL). I’ll worry about that once it is finished…maybe by then time and handling will have worn them out of sight. One can only hope.

Along the way I questioned why I put so much work into something no one may see except my husband and I (and anyone who uses the trailer overnight). Then I thought, “”Hey, why shouldn’t I give myself as much time, creativity and energy as I give to others; I’m worth it!” And that settled the argument with self.