Fast and Easy Quilt with an African Beat!

A couple of weeks ago Annette told you about a new line from Hoffman Fabrics called African Beat… well I absolutely fell in love with this line. All the browns, rusts and greens are just perfect and the amazing giraffe allover is the icing on the cake.

Now the only problem was… What am I going to make out of all these beautiful fabrics? I went online to the Hoffman website and downloaded the free quilt pattern for African Beat, bought the required fabric and set to work cutting and sewing.

The vertical lines of this quilt are perfect for this fabric and it went together really fast and easy. My only recommendation is to trace all the circles on the fusible web, iron it to the uncut fabric and then cut the circles out rather than all the steps the pattern describes.

I stitched around each of the circles using
a variegated thread and zigzag stitch.

When I got the top all put together, as shown in the pattern, it was beautiful but was lacking a little something. I decided it needed an outside border; so I bought another yard of the brown leaves and added a five inch border. This really made the quilt pop and helped finish it off.

The finished quilt... isn't it beautiful!

I then brought it to our custom quilter who helped me piece the back and then did an amazing job quilting it with a leaf pattern similar to those in the border.

Close up of the amazing quilting.

TIP: Matching the Back-

• On the first panel iron one edge over, wrong sides together, and line the design up with that on the other panel.
• Unfold the edge and sew along the crease.

This gives you a perfectly matched back and a nearly invisible seam. For this quilt I used the giraffe allover making the back almost as amazing as the front especially with the gorgeous quilting.

Everyone was so impressed with how this quilt turned out that we decided to make it into a kit which should be arriving in the next couple of weeks at a store near you!

Happy Quilting!
Michelle