Old Muscat Souq quilt featuring Trouvaille by Art Gallery Fabrics

You can find a copy of the Old Muscat Souq here.

The Old Muscat Souq is my modern, block based quilt pattern inspired by a family trip to Oman. This is a fat quarter or yardage friendly pattern (it depends on how you want your quilt to look) with a star block in the center and a square inset on the outer edges.

In case your don't know Oman is a country in the Middle East off the Arabian Sea. We went a couple years ago to visit friends and enjoy things like regular electricity and running water. LOL! Yes, those are things we don't have where we usually live. Oman turned out to be far more beautiful than I imagined. Most of the country is a desert, however, there were so many beautiful mosques, architecture and designs that I found my self constantly inspired.

Muscat is the capital city of Oman which is where we spent out time. A Souq is a market. A highlight for me was visiting the Mutrah Souq which sits on the Gulf of Oman and is two hundred years old. The Mutrah Souq is where I was inspired by a design on a wall to make this quilt. You can read all about the inspiration and see some pictures here.

Trouvaile by Art Gallery Fabrics

This is the first version made of this modern quilt. I had bought Trouvaile by Art Gallery Fabrics a month or two before along with the coordinating solids. I am a sucker for almost any Art Gallery fabrics. I fell in love with this like because of it's modern, geometric designs and flowers. The color palette was also right up by alley. I love the bright and cheery colors, especially the green and orange thrown in their for a little extra flare.

I bought the Trouvaille line and coordinating solids from the Fat Quarter Shop. I love how they carry all the Art Gallery lines, but also a fat quarter bundle of coordinating solids.  This makes choosing fabrics so easy for color challenged people like me.

I decided to make this quilt into a throw size. The Old Muscat Souq quilt pattern is available in four sizes, baby, throw, twin and queen. I tend to make throw size quilts because my kids love to snuggle with them and they don't use as much fabric as a twin size. The throw size for this quilt uses 12 fat quarters. Because I used two different fat quarter bundles I had plenty of fabric. So I went through and pulled out my favorite colors and patterns and set the rest of the bundles to the side.

This pattern took a while to figure out the measurements. The stars and their corners were the hardest. So I started first by using scraps. I think I made about 4 different blocks of the star using different measurements. It was so satisfying when I finally figured it out.

Once I had the measurements down I started cutting up the fat quarters. Then, I mixed and matched the pieces so I knew which fabric I wanted in each block. I stacked all the cut fabrics and kept them on my ironing board or next to my sewing machine. I am currently sewing at the kitchen table, which means my end is a bit of a mess. Ok, it's a big mess. But let's call it controlled chaos. I try to keep the fabric I am currently working with away from where anyone else would be tempted to touch or drop it (I have a couple of tiny hands in my house who love to get into everything). I also take a picture on my phone of the fabrics arranged by block. This is my back up in case someone (think little hands again) get into my fabric. I have a very hard time tell colors apart because I am color blind. So I make sure to take extra care while I am in the middle of a project to not get fabrics confused.

Since this is the first time I was making this quilt and hadn't written out all the directions yet I did make a mistake when cutting. But it was the kind of mistake you want. I cut 1 of the set of pieces a 1/4 inch too long. So as I was making it I recut them.

The Old Muscat Souq has two background fabrics that are only 1/4 inch different in size. I got confused a couple times on which was which. So I put a Post It note on each measurement so I wouldn't get confused anymore. I am a frequent user of this method when quilting. It helps me not get confused and saves me time.

Rulers

Rulers are a big part of quilting. I feel like you could easily spend a small fortune on rulers alone, let alone fabric, cutting mats, thread... I don't have a ton of rulers and honestly don't know how to use a lot of the specialty rulers. I like to develop patterns which use a basic straight line ruler or a square ruler. This is one of those patterns. There also isn't much trimming or really any once you start sewing. The only reason I trimmed is if my seams were a bit off. So don't worry about having to buy anything extra for the Old Muscat Souq, except the pattern and maybe some new fabric.

I quilted this quilt myself. My rows were 1/2 inch apart and I think it added an elegance to this modern quilt. I chose Post Morning Light as the binding fabric. I just love the little flowers on this print. It ties in perfectly with the rest of the quilt while also giving a bit of pizazz to the edge of the quilt. For the backing I pieced together the fabric scraps from the quilt top as well as cut up the rest of the fat quarters in the bundles. I also had a couple yards of Appletini from the Pure Solids line which matched well with this fabric line. So I used this on one half of the backing and the other half was pieced.

 You can see the backing. Part is pieced and part is from some yardage of Appletini I had on hand.

Of course I had some help from my usual baster helper. He gets paid $5 a quilt and he dislikes basting as much as I do. As they say, misery loves company. LOL! 

 This cute gal also wanted to get in on the action.

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