A Quilt for Myself – Adapting the Meadowland Quilt Pattern

Like most quilters I know, I am much more likely to prioritize a quilt I am making as a gift or as a class or pattern sample than a quilt I am making purely for my own use. Do you do that, too?

But last week, I gave myself the gift of a few days to finish up a quilt intended for my own bed that I started during an online Quilt Along in the spring of 2020 – the Meadowland Quilt, pattern by Meghan Buchanan of Then Came June.

I highly recommend this fun, fat quarter-friendly pattern – six quilt sizes are included and the instructions are clear and well-illustrated.

If you’re interested in the pattern, you can buy a paper copy OR a digital copy directly from Then Came June in her online shop. You may also be able to find a paper copy at your local quilt store.

Here is my fabric pull:

I don’t often pull all the fabrics for given quilt from the same fabric collection; but in this case, I had some fat quarter bundles that I thought would be perfect. As I discuss in my Color Tools & Color Confidence for Quilters class, I made sure that I had a nice range of values from relatively light to relatively darker. If you are interested, you can find that class (and others) in my online shop.

I cut up my fabrics as directed in the pattern and sorted them into piles for individual blocks, making sure that each block would have enough internal color and value contrast to be visually interesting:

And here is a preliminary layout of some of my finished blocks:

Although I liked the original layout shown in the pattern (see previous photo) very much, I thought it might be fun to see how the blocks looked when turned on point:

And yes, I’m using the backside of a different quilt as an improvised “design wall”.

I really liked the on-point set, but wasn’t thrilled with how the colors were running together; so I added contrasting white sashing between the blocks and small blue cornerstones at the intersections of the sashing. The cornerstones look rectangular instead of square in the photo below because I haven’t sewn the rows together yet.

I loved how this helped separate and clarify the colors and make the individual blocks pop!

Somehow I forgot to take a photo as I was adding the setting triangles around the outer edges of the quilt, but you can see them in the photo below:

If you would like to know how big to cut side and corner triangles for an on-point quilt, charts like the FREE On Point Setting Cheat Sheet from the Fat Quarter Shop are super handy. Like Kimberly, I usually cut my triangles an inch or more larger than what is mathematically required so that I have plenty of wiggle room to “float” my blocks and trim up my quilt after quilting.

While I usually prefer to quilt my own quilts, this quilt turned out about 100″ on each side – HUGE. So I asked my friend Terri of Threadtales Quiltworks to quilt it on her longarm quilting machine.

Here is a close-up of the Vineberries pattern Terri used:

I used one of the binding methods from my Easy Machine-Sewn Quilt Bindings That Still Look Great! online class to finish off my quilt. If you are interested, you can find that class (and others) in my online shop.

And here’s my finished quilt!

What do you think? Do you like the changes I made?

I love the pattern both ways – in the original layout shown in the pattern and in my adaptation.

Let me know if you try it!

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