Autumn Hues Quilt: A Little Turkey and a Whole Lot of Fall
Sometimes you pick a quilt because you love the fabric. Sometimes you pick it because you love the pattern.
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And sometimes there’s a cute little turkey trotting across the middle of it and that’s pretty much all it takes.
The Autumn Hues quilt pattern by Sandy Gervais was designed to go along with her Bountiful fabric collection, and I knew right away that I wanted to make this one as a sample for the shop. It’s a great showcase for all of those warm fall prints, but really, it’s the turkey that gets me. Every time I look at him trotting through those falling leaves, he makes me giggle.
At 41″ x 41″, Autumn Hues is somewhere between a wall hanging and a table topper. It’s large enough to make an impact in your fall decorating without committing to making an entire bed-sized quilt just because you wanted a turkey in your life.
Making the Autumn Hues Quilt
Most of Autumn Hues is traditional piecing, and Sandy Gervais’s pattern is well written and easy to understand.
I would put this one in the confident beginner category. None of the piecing is particularly difficult, but there are quite a few pieces in those leaves—and some of them are fairly small.
Which brings me to something that will surprise absolutely no one who has been here before:
Starch your fabric.
Of course I starched mine. Pfft. I can’t even believe you asked.
Seriously, though, this is exactly the type of quilt where starching before you cut really pays off. The extra stability makes those smaller leaf pieces much easier to handle and helps keep everything nice and accurate as you’re piecing.
There are 16 leaves in the quilt, but don’t let that number scare you off. Because they’re all constructed the same way, they’re perfect for assembly-line piecing.
Cut everything at once, organize your pieces, and chain piece your way through each step. Once you get into a rhythm, those leaves go together surprisingly quickly.
It’s one of the things I liked about making Autumn Hues. You get enough repetition that you can assembly-line your way through a good chunk of the quilt, but then the big turkey in the center mixes things up. If you’re someone who gets bored making the same quilt block over and over and over again, this is a nice balance.
And Then There’s the Turkey
Obviously, he’s the star of the show.
The turkey itself is pieced, with one small exception: his legs are appliqué.
Now, if you’ve followed me for any length of time, you may already know that I am notoriously lazy when it comes to appliqué.
I wasn’t about to suddenly become an appliqué overachiever for two turkey legs.
Instead, I kept it simple. I put stabilizer on the back of the fabric, cut out the leg shapes and used a straight stitch close to the raw edges to attach them.
That’s it.
No turning under tiny edges. No elaborate appliqué technique. No pretending I’m a person who enjoys doing either of those things.
Because Autumn Hues is a wall hanging/table topper-sized quilt, it isn’t going to see the kind of wear and repeated washing that a bed quilt would. I’m perfectly happy with raw-edge appliqué for those tiny details.
Finished is better than perfect—and the turkey has legs. Mission accomplished.
Quilting Autumn Hues
For the quilting, I chose the Autumn Splendor pantograph, which has a mix of pumpkins and leaves. It was almost too perfect for this quilt.
I scaled the pantograph down fairly small for two reasons. First, I just really like dense quilting on smaller projects. Second, the smaller quilting scale worked better with the scale of the Bountiful fabric prints.
I used Mocha Glide thread, a light brown that blended nicely across all of the warm colors on the front.
But the back is where you can REALLY see the quilting.
I backed mine with the Pumpkin color of Texture, a Riley Blake basic designed by Sandy Gervais. The Mocha thread pops beautifully against that solid-ish pumpkin background, so you can really see all of those little quilted pumpkins and leaves.
I love when the back of a quilt ends up being almost as fun to look at as the front.
Bountiful by Sandy Gervais
Bountiful is very definitely a fall fabric collection, but it doesn’t scream Halloween.
Instead, the sunflowers, pumpkins and warm harvest colors give it more of a late-autumn feel. It’s the kind of fabric that can come out when the first hint of fall shows up and stay out right through Thanksgiving.
That’s another reason I liked Autumn Hues as a way to show off the collection. You get lots of different prints and colors scattered throughout the leaves, while the center turkey gives the whole quilt a fun focal point.
And, I mean…
Look at him.
Tell me that doesn’t make you smile.
Make Your Own Autumn Hues Quilt
I made this Autumn Hues quilt as the shop sample for my Autumn Hues Quilt Kits, so the kits contain the fabrics you need to recreate the quilt top and binding along with the Autumn Hues pattern by Sandy Gervais.
The finished quilt measures 41″ x 41″, making it a great size for a fall wall hanging, table topper or seasonal quilt to toss over a chair or table.
Each kit includes:
- Fabric from Bountiful by Sandy Gervais for the quilt top
- Binding fabric
- Autumn Hues quilt pattern by Sandy Gervais
Backing is not included. You’ll need 1 1/4 yards of backing fabric to finish your quilt.
If that little trotting turkey makes you giggle as much as he does me, you can find the Autumn Hues Quilt Kit in the Treeline Quilting shop and make one of your own.
Just don’t forget to starch those leaves.
Seriously.
