Guest Room Coverlet, Part I

You know that gorgeous bright tropical floral (I think it's Kaufmann “Holiday,” but may be misrembering) in black that I’ve posted a few pics of here and here?

Well, at the same time I got the black (I made a slipcover for the guest room day bed, for when it’s folded up into a couch, plus some pillows -- pics still to come, ‘cause the daybed’s been unfolded all summer, only room in the house that’s cool enough for napping) I also got a huge piece of the ivory colorway, intended to make some curtains. Here is some of it, draped over my ironing board:

Then I discovered that drapery rods were going to be an issue with the windows in this rental house, so I put the fabric away for when we have a house of our own, or, as happened, when I decided to do something else with it.

As I’ve mentioned before, both my sisters are coming to visit in a couple of weeks, to help celebrate/commiserate my 50th birthday. And although we have places for them to sleep, and plenty of sheets, towels, pillows, it’s a little chilly in the wee hours here in late October, and I could use another blanket layer for each of them.

Easy out would have been to buy a couple of cheap blankets at Walmart. Instead, I decided to use the white fabric to make a coverlet for the guestroom bed, backed with a white flannel sheet. I got a good one, from Land’s End. Sheet alone cost twice what I would have spent on a Walmart blanket, but it’s soooo lusciously soft and a good weight for Hawaii.

First challenge is to piece the fabric. It’s 54” wide, and I plan to add a 14" strip to each side.
Being home dec fabric, it's designed so that it can be matched at the sides to make wider panels.

If you look closely, though, you’ll see a problem. There should be some white showing on both edges, on the selvage. Hmmm, this piece is printed a little off-center, so the pattern is running off the selvage edge on one side:

And I've discovered the problem gets progressively worse toward one end. This is going to make an exact lineup on the seams impossible.

Gee, I wonder if that’s why this length of fabric was so irresistibly cheap?

Oh well, too late now. It will look nice anyway. And it’s not like Martha Stewart is going to show up and inspect it.

Here’s how it looks pieced and trimmed to roughly 80"x90”, laid out over the flannel for pinning:

I’ve decided to use some of my leftover rayon imitation-linen coordinating solids to make the binding for the edges. You can read all about that here.