Fil Volant has the immense pleasure of releasing its first quilt pattern: Jeu de Miroir!!  This pattern was a real labor of love and it has evolved quite a bit since the beginning.

The pattern is designed to be suitable for advanced beginners.  In other words, people who have some sewing experience (not necessarily with patchwork or quilting) should be able to follow the directions and successfully finish the project.  The pattern features only one block, which is then made up in different colors to create a mirrored effect which gives the pattern its name.

Instructions are included for creating bias binding from scratch, as well as piecing together the back of the quilt in case you don’t have wideback fabric available. More experienced quilters might elect a different way of finishing the quilt, but we want to provide some guidance to make the pattern as beginner-friendly as possible.

The addition of mitered corners on the borders elevates and frames the design, but in reality, it is a pretty simple process. If you haven’t created mitered corners before,  it can help to do a practice run using some fabric scraps, just to get more comfortable with the technique before doing it “for real” on your final quilt.  In fact, one of the nice things about this border finish is that it looks more complicated than it is!

The quilt pattern includes three different sizes, the largest of which is 85” by 114”, so approximately the size of a Queen size bedspread.  The smallest size is 41” by 55 ½”, so an appropriate size for a crib or baby quilt.  Finally, the size in between those is 41” by 72”, which is our sample size, and it’s a good size for a throw quilt.

The pattern is also available for purchase in French (with metric measurements) for those who might be interested!  The sizes of the French pattern have been adapted for the French market, so they aren’t simply inches converted into centimeters.  One of our goals in releasing patterns in both French and English is to truly adapt the patterns to the needs of quilters within our reach.

We’ve made up the quilt using two different color and fabric schemes, one with patterned fabric and one using only solid (or nearly-solid) colors.  The repetition of the block really lends itself to playing with monochromatic color schemes and we look forward to seeing what everybody comes up with!  You can see some variations made by our partners by going to the Portfolio page and selecting the Jeu de Miroir project.