Christmas Quilt

Here’s my happy-accident Christmas Quilt that I’ve just finished, my ninth quilt. I started it early this year using a January sale jelly roll, with a hiatus during studio construction and starting the new business. Unfortunately, the lone star pattern I was following wasn’t followed closely enough, and I completely ballsed up the strip cutting. Hence the single lone star in the middle, and the hash borders – which by happy accident have worked nicely. Given everything outside the centrepiece is completely made up, I’m pleased with the outcome. I still haven’t quite mastered the layering of backing, batting and top sheet, especially on my own which is why things are a bit baggy in places. That may settle a little after a couple of washes. Mind you, after 22 feet of hand sewing the binding on, which took 4.5 hours, I’m pretty good at that! Now to find somewhere large enough to display a 6’6″ square quilt… that hasn’t already been bedecked with decorations…

 

 

Dedication Quilt

During my ‘quiet times’ here on the blog, I’m rarely resting! Complete with a conservatory and hall refurbishment over the last couple of months, I’ve been busy on various projects I can’t share at the time. This is one of them – quilting a pre-printed topper (roughly 36×48″) for the dedication (equivalent to christening) of our friends’ newborn son. That happened earlier today, so now I can share without spoiling the surprise!

I used the free motion setting on my sewing machine to quilt round each of the letters and the main lines of each of the illustrations. As normal, I have hand bound the edging and used an 80/20 cotton-polyester wadding. Being able to wash the quilt is a pre-requisite for this age group! At points I wished I had chosen simpler quilting lines, but the finished article was worth the three days worth of man-hours. Now to move onto quilting my very large happy-accident Christmas quilt: more on that in another post 🙂

250,000 views – the giveaway

It’s not long to wait before my little corner of the blogosphere captures it’s 250,000th view. I gave you a sneak preview of my giveaway a couple of weeks ago… and here’s the whole thing! I’m giving away an A3 quilt featuring 100% cotton fabric onto which I have hand drawn and shaded tangle patterns that I’ve published on this blog, quilted with cotton/polyester wadding and then hand bound with a black fabric binding. It’s labelled on the back with my name and the fact it’s my seventh quilt.

Pentel Gel Pen for Fabrics

Derwent Inktense block and water

Quilting on Pfaff Quilt Expression 4

As mentioned before – all you have to do to win this giveaway is to be the person closest to the 250,000th view that leaves a meaningful comment somewhere on this blog (spam doesn’t count!). All you have to do then (Sandy F. take note – that’s twice now) is respond to the email from me asking for your postage details!

Just a little thank you from me for supporting me over the months and years 🙂

 

 

Handprinted Quilts

I’ve just put the finishing touches to two small quilts. They both feature my own pattern design, which I hand screen printed at college onto fabric offcuts using black textile ink. The first shows the patten, unadulterated, quilted using black cotton and free motion machine stitch round each of the circle motifs. The second is dyed with Adirondack Color Wash sprays (which despite my best efforts still covered everything nearby!), dried, heat set, rinsed, ironed and then quilted in the same way. Both are hand bound and labelled. I use backstitch to hand sew labels for my quilts as this is unlikely to wash off! They are both 22.5″x42″ in size.

Quilt No.5 – ‘Pattern No. 1’

Quilt No. 6 – ‘Rainbow’

Quilt No. 4 – ‘Puzzle’

The weather has been lousy here all weekend, and rather than making cards – which was my plan – I ended up quilting. There was something about being under the quilt as I was sewing it and binding the edges that suited the conditions! I started it at the beginning of February at a quilting workshop I was given for my birthday at Quorn Country Crafts, during which I finished the top. I layered it and started quilting on Friday afternoon, did the quilted border and corners and binding yesterday, and I finished it with a hand stitched label this morning. Most of the quilt is quilted with stitch-in-ditch, with the wide border needing a little more, so I created my own design. The quilt measures 64x64in with binding, and as you can see was designed to go in our spare room.

Update 04-JAN-13: I’ve received a staggering number of hits (700+ in 7 days) for this post – mainly via Pinterest. I’d love to know what’s grabbed your attention! Please leave a comment if you’re visiting 🙂

 

‘Lilac Time’ Quilt

What do you get the man who has most things for his Christmas and birthday presents? Turns out that two quilting workshops are a very good idea! The first I went to was over six weeks in Jan-Feb 2012 at Quorn Country Crafts, where the lovely Margaret supervised the ladies and I in making a ‘Lilac Time’ quilt. The fabrics were chosen to fit into the spare room – which now needs redecorating… It’s amazing how much the costs mount – including all materials, wadding and backing as well as the workshop costs, this double bed sized quilt cost £200 before my time was taken into consideration! Don’t ever underestimate the cost of a hand crafted quilt! This one isn’t for sale though… The petal quilting in the feature fabric is to my own design and the rest is stitch-in-ditch quilted.

Free Motion Machine Quilting – Sampler Quilt progress

I’ve had chance to do a few more squares of my free motion machine quilting sampler quilt. See my first post for more details.

Free Motion Machine Quilting – more squares

Four more squares from my ‘practice’ free motion machine quilting, using fabulous continuous line patterns as mentioned in my first bit of blogging about this.

Clockwise from top left are: Daisy Chain, Starshine, Do-Si-Do and Colorado Springs. I’m getting a bit quicker now that I’m getting the practice, and do recommend the daily practice – I did have over New Year off though 🙂

Free Motion Machine Quilting – another two squares

I’m trying to do one free motion quilt square per day – it keeps me in practice, doesn’t put too much strain on my dicky wrists, and doesn’t take up too much time. I’ve also started sewing up the squares to see what it’ll look like completed.

As usual, my photography lets me down… but you get the gist. And here’s what the four of them look like bound together:

Free Motion Machine Quilting – first attempts

Happy Christmas to you all 🙂

I’ve been at the sewing machine using one of the many books I got for Christmas – Hari Walner’s Continuous Line Quilting Designs. Featuring 80 designs, it relies on free motion machine stitching, unless you’re doing it by hand of course… I’ve decided to make a sampler quilt since my practice squares have turned out ok. It’ll be just calico and 80/20 wadding – may be a prototype for a silk dupion one? Here’s the first two squares, 10×10″ in size.