Quilt Finish – Twisted Butlers

This was supposed to be a quilt for Mr. Sparkles. He’s that person in my life that should have received one of my first quilts, but even eleven years after I started quilting, he hasn’t specifically received any. Whoops! I know there’s plenty of you out there that are in the same predicament! Amiright? Let me give you a hot tip: buy them diamonds instead. It works a treat and you can carry on making as many things for you as your creative heart desires. But I digress. 

As I said, it was supposed to be. Way back in October 2015, I had started developing the foundation paper pieced pattern inspired by wallpaper that lined the walls of a local cafe we frequented for brunch. This was only three years after I had made my first quilt, so I was inspired by very different things then. This pattern, Twisted Elegance became my first paper pieced pattern. (Side-eye side-note: if you look closely in a latter episode of the television show, The Queen’s Gambit, you’ll see the same wall paper!)

During those first few years, I had collected and stashed multiple fabrics from various collections of Parson Gray designed by David Butler. (Yes, as in the husband of Amy Butler. A creative powerhouse duo, indeed.) His fabrics are now out of print and can be a hard find, so pick them up when you can! Not to play into gender stereotypes, but many of your earth-tone loving friends would love these fabrics. I paired these with Art Gallery Pure Elements in Linen as the background. With its slightly creamy hue, it complements these rich tone-on-tone prints with ease. Considering the slivers of fabric used in this pattern, solids or tone-on-tone (blenders) work the best. Save those wild child florals for something else!

Just to be sure, I measured our bed multiple times. Again, I wanted Mr. Sparkles to really be able to use this quilt every night. I used the Twisted Elegance motif, and colour-coordinated the fabrics based on hue and value to create a digital layout that would be unique. I then paper-pieced each of the 168 blocks required, meticulously placing the fabrics to create dimension within each row of diamonds. 

Download Twisted Elegance Here

At one stage, I reached out to the generous quilt world for help when I ran out of a specific fabric during a particularly foul cutting catastrophe. Y’all are the best! Many-a-time I assembled sections when I felt like I needed a small win of completion. This can really help regain some confidence when you’re struggling mid-project. And so it went—for years—until the quilt top was fully sewn together. (I also made a few other quilts along the way!)

And there it was, a whole helluva lot of work, but a quilt that would surely work with our bedroom aesthetic. I laid the finished quilt top out on the bed just to check it again, and I was sure Mr. Sparkles would love it! Finally! One of the worst and best things about this quilt were all the pieces of paper that needed to be removed from the back of the quilt top. It was the worst because it took forever to get them all out, but it was the best because Grandma Sparkles did about half of them for me! Bless! (Trust me, I’ve always been spoiled, and I’m well aware of it!) Remember when she got stuck in Australia during COVID? Well, I made her earn her keep! 

Once that was finished, I was able to send it off to my longarmer extraordinaire: Leanne Harvey of Mount Vincent Quilts. I think the quilting design I chose was an Urban Elementz design, but after looking through 3,719 of their motifs—the mind boggles. (True story.) I finally settled on this design because of the referential diamond shape, and the softness the loop adds. While I was originally going to have this quilt custom quilted, I realised I couldn’t afford the cost or time custom quilting would be for this sleeping beauty. 

The final overall design of this quilt was somewhat serendipitous. I by and large don’t pre-buy fabric for any of my quilts. Instead, I usually just work with what I have in my stash. Most of my quilts consist of a plethora of fabrics, even when using the same colours. Some might trivialise this by just calling it “scrappy,” but it’s more intentioned than that. More variety in the fabrics of the same hue and value creates more depth and interest in the quilt. I may top up the resources as needed, but this methodology hasn’t usually been a problem. 

Download Twisted Elegance Here

Until you get to a quilt like this that very much so requires an exact amount of fabric! Even more so when you’re using fabrics all from the same designer, and many that were out of print near the final construction stages of this quilt. I alway get asked, “What size of fabric cuts do you buy?” Fat quarters or half-yards nearly all of the time. So to accommodate for some of the smaller portions available in my stash, I worked with my available resources and designed a fade-out solution on the sides. I had originally only entertained the idea of a ghosting of the columns, but now necessity really was the mother of invention! She is fierce!

Okay, so here’s the part of this quilt’s journey where everything fell apart, and I’m not talking about the seams. Somewhere between the first design iterations, multiple measurements on our bed, and the completion of the quilt, we bought a new bed. A larger bed. What once was a queen became a king, and well, what once was a quilt for Mr. Sparkles, became a quilt that didn’t fit! (So my version of the story goes! Mr. Sparkles still contends I just didn’t measure correctly, as the finished quilt was also too short for either bed! Okay, okay! Six years of making this quilt left both of our memories a bit vague!)

This quilt story does have a happy ending though! While it disastrously didn’t fit on my own bed (new, old, or otherwise), it did find a soft place to land. Around the time of its finish, I knew Grandma Sparkles was building her new house—and new life—back in Oklahoma. A new house calls for new furnishings, so I brought this quilt with me to decorate the queen-sized bed she has in the spare bedroom. This became unintentionally ironic considering she had only a few months before assisted me with tearing the foundation papers out of the quilt top. She works hard for the money, and the quilts!

This quilt took six years to make and over a year to finally write a blog post about it. But don’t get it twisted, I’m extremely happy with the results—regardless of who’s bed it fits on! Time will only tell if Mr. Sparkles has to wait another decade or so to get his own quilt. Let’s just hope we don’t upgrade to a California King!

Title: Twisted Elegance
Size: 90” x 100”
Pattern: Twisted Elegance pattern by Molli Sparkles
Fabric: Various Parson Gray fabrics by David Butler for Free Spirit
Piecing: Machine stitched on Juki TL-98P with Aurifil 50wt, White 2024
Quilting: Long arm quilting by Mount Vincent Quilts
Binding: Hand stitched with Aurifil 40wt, Medium Grey 1158
Backing: Rain in Ink, Seven Wonders by Parson Gray
Timing: November 2015 – November 2021
Favourite Part: It found a home after all, and that I’m finally writing this blog post!

Download Twisted Elegance Here