The Floss Quilt

It all started with a charm pack of Carkai by Carolyn Friedlander for Robert Kaufman Fabrics. I saw that gorgeous spectrum of color spread across my cutting table, and then my eyes drifted to a wooden spool of Aurifil floss in the tool cart nearby.

And suddenly I knew I had to make this quilt.

This is by far the most "modern" project I've attempted in quite a while. I modeled my spools completely on the tall, thin Aurifloss wooden version -- these are exactly twice the size of the original -- using about half of the Carkai charm pack for my "thread" colors. I couldn't resist adding an empty spool in there for fun. I used Quilter's Linen for the spool ends and an off-white shade of Kona solid for most of the background, tossing in some of the low volume prints from Carkai for more depth and interest. I love how one of the Carkai prints next to the brown spool had a line of the same color in it, so that it looks like a bit of thread is coming off that spool.

Of course, I had to quilt this one by hand using creamy white Aurifloss, adding three rows of stitches between each horizontal row and one between every vertical row of spools. It was a joy to sit by the window at the end of our loft and sew by hand on this little quilt all afternoon. For my binding, I used a white crosshatch print from Architextures and included a spectrum of all the "thread" colors along the top left side of the quilt, leaving a gap for the empty spool. If you look closely, you'll see that missing "thread" color on the bottom right side of the quilt binding.

This was one of those project ideas that hits you like lightening out of the blue. It's the kind that you just suddenly have to make -- and can't stop working on during every free moment you have until it's finished. And when you're done, you step back and look at it and it just seems like a gift that caught you by surprise, that was sent to you when you had no idea it was coming.

But you're so glad it did.