I’m going to tell you how I made my beautiful batik patchwork quilt.
Like many of my quilts I didn’t start with a design in mind and then find the fabrics for it. I actually started with the fabric. I saw the fabric, loved it more than some might think was a normal amount to love fabric and just bought it. Didn’t know if it was enough or too much. Just knew that when the time was right I’d turn it into something even more beautiful than just the fabric itself. Quilt making often starts this way for me, sometimes just with a charm pack of 5 inch squares or just one awesome fabric print that has inspired me. And I just go from there.
Where it began – lockdown!
Shockingly this story begins almost 5 years ago 😂. In May 2020 with extra time on hands because we couldn’t go anywhere, I treated myself to 13 fat quarters. They were from the Moda Batik Longitude Collection from Wool Warehouse. I didn’t start with a design or plan I just bought the fabrics that were still in stock from this collection, making sure I had a good mix of colours and prints and scale.
I initially had a large scale half square triangle design in mind where one half would be plain white cotton and the other half a bold batik. And I’d make a geometric, offset diamond design with them similar to my St Ives quilt but on a larger scale. I bought the white fabric and started to prewash everything.
Side note on prewashing.
If I’m working with brand new quilting cottons of a similar quality I don’t prewash. But the process of making batiks meant they might act differently to my plain white cotton. So I decided to just wash it all to give it the best chance of all acting the same once it’s made into a quilt and washed. Prewashing is also a good idea if you’re using different fibres of fabric. Or a mix of old and new fabric. Like for example if you were making a quilt out of old clothes that had been washed and some new fabric too, you’d want to pre wash.
I’m not sure how (lets blame parenting, running a home, businesses, other craft projects and just general life) but it wasn’t until May 2023, a whole 3 years later that I really started playing around with the fabrics and layout. I realised that if I went with the half square triangle I was going to end up with the worlds biggest quilt or loads of batik left over. It was at this point that the concept for the finished design started to make sense in my mind, I had direction.
I get so committed to stuff that I had trouble letting go of my original design idea. But I felt like in these prints and colours that it would lend itself beautifully to large square patchwork covered in rows and rows of hand quilting. The quilt I had in my mind looked like something you might find in a street market somewhere exotic. It would look opulent and luxe but perfectly imperfect and absolutely handmade.
Cutting out 56 squares
So I set to work cutting 9 ½ inch squares out of my washed and pressed batik fat quarters. I used a rotary cutter, cutting mat and quilting ruler for this job. I got four squares out of each fat quarter. Once I started laying it all out I realised I wanted another four squares to get the 7x8 layout I wanted, so I ordered another print from the collection in the chartreuse colour along with a beautiful purple batik for the backing. I was so lucky to still be able to get a print from the range 3 year later. One of the reasons why starting with a random amount of fabric is quite a risky way to plan a quilt.
I then hung wadding on my quilt wall and started playing around with layout. I wanted it to look random. But as you’ll know if you’ve ever tried to lay out quilt or crochet squares random – it’s trickier than it sounds to make everything look balanced and random at the same time. No two same colours or prints together is no easy task.
Patchwork – machine piecing without perfection
Once I got that balance right it was time to start piecing them together. It was now June 2023 and heating up in the studio. Esme showed up after school one day wanting to help which turned out to be the answer to a reservation I had.
The vision I had for this quilt was that it was to be perfectly imperfect. As in, look beautiful, but not factory made perfection. In my head, the corners shouldn’t match up perfectly. After so many years of working as a perfectionist, purposely perfecting the art of getting my patchwork corners to match up. I wasn’t sure how I was going to unlearn that skill and make it so the corners were slightly off. Cue the kids! So Esme helped me piece the squares into strips. And then to join the strips, instead of meticulously pinning my corner seams to match I just put them face to face and let Esme sew. No pinning or matching up corners at all which was helping to create the exact look I wanted. And as a recovering perfectionist, was just what I needed. We got lots done together. Despite Peri’s best efforts to mess up our layout.
And over dinner Ray got to hear all about it and decided he wanted to get in on the action and asked if he could help. So a few days later after a full on day of school and Cubs and awful Hayfever he came to join me in the studio to help and did so well! Which I think is just wonderful for a family quilt and both kids to have helped make it and had some experience at using a sewing machine. They were brilliant.
We kept chipping away at the patchwork piecing whenever we had chance and by the end of August 2023 the quilt top was complete.
Basting!
Now time to baste, I got to work straight away. Basting is when you fix the three layers of your quilt together so they hold still while you quilt it. With a large quilt you’re generally going to need to do some joining for the backing unless you get extra wide fabric especially for quilt backs. But this really limits your options. I knew I wanted a whole back in purple batik so I had to join two pieces. Once joined I lay it out on my studio floor with the right side against the floor. Split the seam. And to stop it moving I taped the corners. I then lay my wadding over the top, then spray basted the wadding to the backing fabric using Odif 505 fabric spray adhesive. Sitting in the middle of the quilt I’d flap the wadding back to half way, spraying a few inches worth and then smoothing the wadding out back onto the backing fabric. I’d continue until one side was in place then move and sit on the half that was stuck, and do the same with the other half. Once that was complete I flipped it, layout the quilt top on it, got it straight and central and then spray basted the top to the wadding the same way.
Seeing as it’s a big quilt, I knew it would take me some time to hand quilt the whole thing. So I decided to add some quilting pins too, to support the adhesive basting.
Time to add some quilting guidelines.
While the quilt was still on the studio floor I added some quilting lines with my quilting ruler and Clover Hera marker. The Hera marker is one of those tools that now I have it I’m not sure how I coped without! You could probably use a blunt butter knife or the non serrated bit of a dinner knife to do the same job. It just leaves a dent in your quilt where you want your lines to be so you have something to follow with your stitches without having to mark your quilt with pen. These lines tend to stick around for a nice long time so you can put it down and come back to it months later and they’ll still be there.
Hand quilting – the therapeutic bit.
As I mentioned above this one was going to be fully hand quilted. It’s the biggest hand quilting job I think I’ve done but over the years I’ve grown to really love the process of hand quilting so I wasn’t too daunted by it. And I had no deadline so I could just enjoy adding quilting lines as and when I wanted to work on it until I felt I’d done enough. I used DMC cotton perlé size 8. I had a few shades of gold already from my St Ives quilt so set to work with those. And ordered in some more jewel tones. And I just added rows and rows all going in the same direction, one inch apart. Starting across the middle of each square and adding more guide lines and quilt lines until I felt I had enough. I stopped at 5 lines on each square. And this left an interval of a few inches after every 5 lines.
Dipping in and out of hand quilting this took place over a couple of years. During this time the quilt made a beautiful studio backdrop on the quilt wall and even featured in the photoshoot for the Ray’s Room Craft Planner. And I just took it down to work on now and again.
Binding – pure silk velvet! A new one on me.
During that hand quilting time at some point I spotted the most beautiful pure silk velvet ribbon on Etsy in a shade called ‘fox’. The velvet flock was like a golden chartreuse and the backing a rusty orange fox colour. (They are a gorgeous independent shop and stock so many beautiful shades of this ribbon you can check them out here.) It was stunning. I knew I had to bind my quilt with it. But I hadn’t used anything like this to bind a quilt before. I normally make binding out of quilting cotton. It was going to be an expensive way to bind a quilt – especially if it didn’t work. Scary! I knew velvet has a mind of its own when it comes to sewing with it. And the width and thickness of the ribbon meant I probably wasn’t going to be able to use my usual binding method to attach it.
I was brave and went for it! It came in 135cm lengths. I joined the lengths of ribbon with a diagonal seam. Then lay it right side facing the front of my quilt, pinned and machine sewed. It wouldn’t stay still even with pins so this was a challenge. I then flapped it over to the back of the quilt, tucked a ¼ of an inch under and hand sewed with a tiny whip stitch to the back of the quilt. This method and the fact that it was super silky floppy velvet made mitring the corners really tricky. I added a few extra stitches where I wouldn’t normally need to, to get the corners looking as neat as I could.
If I was to use this beautiful product to bind a quilt again (I’ve already got my eye on the shade ‘santa baby’ for my Christmas quilt) then I would make sure when I sewed my velvet strips together that the velvet direction was all going the same way. School girl error, but I didn’t do that this time and it meant that when hand sewing it to the back of the quilt some sections of binding wanted to tuck under too much, and some didn’t want to tuck under at all. This has left me with some slight inconsistencies in the width of the finished binding look. I have made peace with this in my mind by telling myself it helps with the perfectly imperfect look I was always intending for this quilt.
And that’s how I made my beautiful Batik Patchwork Quilt. Officially declared complete in February 2025.
If I could change one thing.
If I had a time machine I think the only thing I would change is the wadding. I think cotton wadding would have lent itself well to this quilt. I think less puff and more drape might have been nice. I’m not sure if I was being impatient, trying to keep costs down, or if I was using up something I had in the studio but I ended up with quite a lofty polyester wadding. Which has given it a gorgeous puff. So its really no biggy. Just something I’d probably change if I could.
Over all
I’m head over heels in love with the outcome and everything I learned along the way. It’s been five years in the making. Now it begins its life in our family home, being snuggled under and loved for so many more years to come. 
If you’d like to find out more about how to get started in patchwork quilting – get in touch! Or book a Patchwork Quilting Studio Session package here.
If you fancy having a go at making your own batik quilt and want anymore information on techniques or materials, comment below or join the Ray’s Room Crafters Facebook Group.
Hope to see you there!
With love
Tash 💖
