Practising Proper Patchwork

Back so soon I hear you say, and it's not even March! Goodness me.

Thank you for the lovely comments on my last post - unfortunately several commentators (?) is that the right word, are no-reply bloggers which means I can't reply and that makes me a bit sad. I like to reply when someone takes the trouble to leave a comment. Especially these days as comments are as rare as hen's teeth.

So if you have commented here and haven't had a reply from me, why don't you have a look at this blog post and check out your settings.

Meanwhile, I have been in a bit of a patchwork mood this last couple of weeks. I spotted a post on Leanne's blog recently telling us about the Bella Skill Builder BOM. I was drawn immediately to the calm, uncluttered appearance of the quilt and it peaked my interest. The patterns will be published monthly on the Fat Quarter Shop's blog, free. The idea is to make the quilt from a palette of Bella solids.
Despite teaching P&Q for 12 years, I have never deluded myself that I am an expert and believe we all have skills to be learned.
So I have dived in but of course have  deviated slightly by deciding to finally start using my horde of shirt fabrics, mainly plain blues and whites. Along the way I will be happy to add from my regular stash of solids and I might even buy some if I have to. The first block was a kaleidoscope, made from a template, or a purchased ruler, but I opted to make a card template which worked fine. (I have always avoided template blocks so this was my first wee challenge). And I have to say I was pleased with the results of my blocks. I took a few progress shots along the way. I did go against the instructions in a couple of places when I decided to press two seams open, deciding that this would make the final seam less bulky.

More proper patchwork in my next post - I'm on a bit of a roll!

Deadline Smashed

Many moons ago I made this cushion for my son and his girlfriend when they were living apartment life in city centre Glasgow. I made it with a mix of Japanese textured cottons and Sweetwater's Road 15, one of my all time favourite ranges. The cushion fitted well with their modern style and I hatched a secret plan that this Road 15 print would be the basis of a future quilt..........perhaps a wedding quilt?? Who knew?
I had all but given up buying fabric from overseas and stuck to our LQS Kaleidoscope where I knew there was a good stock of this precious fabric. I also know that once a Moda line is gone, it's gone. So I invested in 6m of that particular vanilla print and stashed it away.

A happy engagement was announced back in May 2015 and I was then able to legitimately start planning a quilt. I had long planned something quite complex that involved a specialist ruler that had also been bought and stashed. But you know what - I decided that this couple would not necessarily be into complex patchwork. Their style is quite minimal with little frivolous touches. So I chose simple. I also decided that I wanted to Quilt As You Go and so designed something that lent itself to this. Instead of selecting more prints from the Road 15 line, I selected several single metre cuts from Jennifer Sampou's first Shimmer line - these are gorgeous, quite understated fabrics with just a wee bit of metallic interest in them. So all of these had been chosen for my original plan but I managed to incorporate them into my new simple plan. Another little hammer was thrown into the works.

The happy couple moved to the suburbs last Spring, and treated themselves to a new bed - and yes, you guessed it -super king - I groaned!! Definitely QAYG!!!

This was my final plan on EQ7, it almost seems too simple to have been planned but I did consider lots of options like big blocks, blocks with snowball type corners etc but opted for this.

So I made a start on it last year and have taken things pretty slowly. I made the Shimmer blocks first, eight, 18" blocks made up of 6" patches. Panels of Road 15 above and below these blocks plus a centre block made up a centre "quilt" that measures 54" x 94". The outer panels were just big pieces of Road 15 that had to be layered up and quilted bringing the full quilt up to a nice square 94".

I did straight line quilting, lots of it. The outer panels nearly felled me when I discovered slipped stitches and just knew this was the fault of having spray basted the long sections together. I didn't unpick, I just oversewed, reckon nobody will ever know, unless they read this, lol. I had quite a bit of fabric left when considering how to back this giant - I looked at Kaleidoscope again - they actually still have some Road 15 left in stock and Susan there was so very helpful. In the end I bought another Sweetwater in vanilla and some in black with a tiny white spot, to bind. And so I have, with careful placement, created a reversible quilt. I have machine embroidered a label in very subtle colours but won't show this here as it's a bit personal.

As far as QAYG goes, I reckon those of you unfamiliar with the technique would be hard pushed to spot where this has been done. For those of you who do use the technique, and especially ladies from my former classes - you might be interested to learn that when I folded the folded edge over to the right side, I used the machine blanket stitch to secure instead of straight stitching it down. I found this avoided the rather hard edge that I usually produce at this stage.

And lest you think I am sounding a little conceited, let me tell you about my binding. I bought black with a tiny white spot, made up yards and yards of binding. Then I decided the white looked.....too white. So I dipped the lot in a solution of cold tea, dried it, ironed it again and started, again, to sew it to the quilt. Not for the first time in my quilting life, I turned the last corner.....

Oops...........so I had to cut more, dye more, dry more, add it to the rest, with a 94" square quilt still attached.................

and all was well, finally. 

The wedding isn't until July so as the title of this post suggests, I reckon that is a deadline smashed.

Have a great weekend..

PS (Thanks to my quilting pals for holding this monster up yesterday for the photo shoot!!)