So near, yet so far

I have very nearly finished Aimee's Quilt; I had about 1m of the outer border left to go when I ran out of thread... this quilt has now consumed 600m of thread which is absolutely insane considering that it's only about 6m square... I never realised how thread-intensive machine quilting could be.

I'm very please with the results so far, but it does leave me with something of a dilemma - do I drive the 3 hour round trip to The Quilt Room where I got the thread (and can thus be sure I'm buying the right colour) or do I just order one spool of each of the likely possiblities from the internet on the basis that I'll use it at some point. I was going to drive but when you consider that it'll cost me the best part of £20 in petrol I think that it will actually be cheaper to order excessive amounts of thread online... Next time I shall be very careful to make a note of which precise colour wave of thread I'm using before I throw the annoying sticky label away!

Anyway, the fruits of my labour so far; the inner quilting has been showcased before but I'm particularly proud of my outer border design. It's totally freehand, no pattern marking etc, and it's actually worked out better than I hoped. I'm thinking of calling this quilt 'Dreaming of Butterflies', just seems to fit with the fabric I wound up using and all the stars in the design.

Click For Bigger and Admire the Stars in the Border!

We have backing

We made it into town today and Ikea came up trumps for us. Their by-the-metre fabric didn't really have anything I liked but Rob spotted a super bedset which looked to be just the thing. It has nothing in common with the front but I really don't think it matters - it's fun and 'kiddy' and worked out to about £1.50/m so I love it.

I did all the seam removal and ironing and now it's ready to go - it's a nice coarse weave so I don't think the machine is going to mind it and I have loads left for other projects too. I must add Ikea to my list of shops to visit for bargains.

Another Top Completed

Today Rob had a hangover so he slept in really late and then spent the afternoon playing on the internet so we didn't go to town as planned, on the flip side I got to do lots of sewing!

I finished the adjustments to my Baby Bargello and added on the borders so that's another top finished. Originally it was made up of 20x20 2" squares but I don't really like square quilts, and for a cot it seemed a little unwieldy, so today I carefully removed the centre two strips and one from each side as well so that now instead of 4 five-step panels I have 4 four-step panels. It's still nice and symetrical but the overall quilit is obviously now longer than it is wide. I added the plain 'inner' border onto it and laid it out to decide if I wanted to have one or two chequerboard rows as the outer border but when I saw it properly I decided that actually I liked it just how it was so it will be staying with the single border and is thus finished :D

Now to find the backing. Tommorrow we're heading into town to go swimming and Ikea is conveniently right next to the pool so I think i'll work in a little detour to see if I can pick up some cheap meterage from them; if not I'll call the Quilt Room and see if they have any of my stars fabric left.

The Blue Quilt

This quilt is literally my every-day quilt. In the winter it goes on top of the duvet for some extra warm, snuggly goodness and in the summer when it gets really hot we ditch the duvet and just keep the quilt to sleep under.

This was the first iteration of my 'denim' quilt. I was going through a phase where I was balking at paying £9 or £10 for a metre of fabric and wanting to make a more frugal and practical quilt. I originally wanted to use recycled denim but was told (quite rightly) that this really wasn't a good idea for the Quilt As You Go course I had signed up for. A quick trip to the Fabric Warehouse resulted in me picking up some light & dark 'denim' coloured cottons for about £3/m (which satisifed my frugality drive) which I mixed with some calico (which ironically cost more than double that as I had to get it from the quilt shop when I realised I didn't have a background).

The resulting quilt is simple but, I think, quite striking and uses just 3 fabrics to construct a variation of an Irish Chain (as featured in Carolyn Forster's Quilting On The Go book which I highly recommend). It was the first time I'd tried the quilt as you go method and, whilst it does add a couple of extra stages, it makes the hand quilting sooo much easier - I would never have wanted to do as much quilting as I did if I had to manhandle the entire quilt all the time. Also, I was a little afraid that the assembled quilt would be weaker than a traditional quilt (each block is constructed seperately so there isn't a solid piece of wadding/backing running through it) but it's been in daily use for the best part of 2 years now and isn't showing any signs of stress.

The whole quilt (King Sized)

Detail of the hand quilting (Click image to see better)

I used the same fabric on the back of each block as on the front so there is a chequerboard effect on the reverse.

Top Quilting Done

The main quilting is done and I have painstakingly worked every last stray thread back into the quilt top - I make it about 10 hours to quilt on the machine and then another 3 to work the ends in; got to be the quickest quilting I've ever done and I'm really pleased with the results. It's not perfect but it's pretty damned good if I say so myself :D

Detail of Quilting

Introducing the Denim Lone Star

I'd been wanting to make a quilt out of old jeans for ages but for obvious reasons the tutors on my quilting classes expressed considerable doubt about me using denim for patchwork (hence how The Blue Quilt came to be). I decided that the only way to get my quilt made was to go it alone so I set to work choosing a pattern.

There was a lovely post on my old blog (eaten by the free-hosting company) that showed all the different sorts of denim quilts that I came across on my internet searching, I may well recreate it when I have some spare time - for now let me say there are many. But none of them were quite what I wanted.

Eventually I realised what it was that I really wanted to make: A Denim Lone Star quilt. I love the lone star pattern and the radiating bands of colour in the star but the sheer number of diamonds had always put me off. This then was the perfect solution - denim is heavy and thick therefore I had the perfect excuse to use big pieces and by carefully sorting my stash of old jeans I could get the bands of colour I so admired and add a tonal spin to things too.

Again, on the old blog there was a step-by-step record of exactly how I made the quilt. This too will hopefully be revived but will take a little while to re-assemble.

For now, here it is - the Denim Lone Star Quilt. The blue is all recycled jeans (and a skirt) the background I cheated on and bought from Fabric Land (but it was really cheap if that helps!). It's massive and it weighs a ton - it's too big for my king-sized bed and only just fits on my living room floor but I love it. It was originally destined to be a picnic rug but I've become quite horrified by the thought of that lovely white backing getting muddy so I think it will be a sofa throw instead.

Background Musings

I have some lovely starry fabric to do the inner border on my Baby Bargello but as-yet I haven't bought a backing. I was going to just get a couple of metres of Sleepytime fabric to match the front but it appears that it's nigh-on impossible to get in the UK,doubly so if you don't want blue or pink.

Time for a rethink then... perhaps I could go with the inner border fabric, if I do that then I probably want to bind it in it too, and the bolt I bought it from was looking distinctly on the slim side but surely the internet will have some for me. Nope, no such luck. Even after I mananged to figure out what it was (Sage Stars from Timeless Treasure's Noah's Ark range) it appears that it's just as hard to get hold of as the Sleepytime. I really must start asking how long a range has been out before I buy from it! I guess I need to finish my adjustments to the quilt top, give it a quick measure and some time next week I'll take the plunge and call the Quilt Room to see if they have enough of this left for me!

The elusive Sage Stars

Let the quilting begin

I've taken the plunge and started on the machine quilting and against all the odds it's actually going quite well. I think the machine quilting course paid off - apart from a slight whoopsy at the beginning (where i made the squiggles waaay too small) everythings gone fairly smoothly. And it's quick too, maybe 4 hours worth of work has resulted in over half the quilt done. I think I may be doing this again - it doesn't quite have the same relaxation factor as hand quilting but it is remarkably theraputic and the hours are wizzing by.

Quilting in Progress

Basting, Check

One step closer to the finish line - I basted Aimee's Quilt today. Slight hiccup when I managed to fix the shorter spare backing fabric to the wadding instead of the actual backing piece but thanks to the ever forgiving 505 spray I was able to replace it with the correct piece with no major issues.

All set to start on the machine quilting, slightly scary cos I've never actually done it on a proper quilt before (and am possibly being a bit ambitious by jumping in with the meandering instead of straight lines) - we'll see how it goes.

Baby Bargello

Today I started my Baby Bargello - the course was a birthday gift from my mum and we spent a very enjoyable day at The Quilt Room where I managed to piece the entire centre of the quilt in about 5 hours - I was impressed with myself!

It was probably one of the most enjoyable courses i've been on in a while as the teaching was excellent and it was easy to get your teeth into the quilt - once you understood how to stagger the strips it was just sewing in a straight line which is something I find very theraputic.

My jelly roll worked nicely too - I was a little worried that using only one fabric range (albeit in 5 colourwaves) would result in a rather insipid quilt but instead I have a beatifully subtle centrepiece. It needs to have borders added but other than that it's all done - I think this will definately be a pattern to remember for the future; easy to make and very pleasing to the eye.

The pieced centre

Detail of fabrics

New Beginnings

After a timely reminder from my mum I've finally remembered to order the fabric for the baby quilt I will be making next weekend. I was going to get an insanley well priced fat quarter pack shipped from America but that would have needed ordering about a month ago to get the shipping at a decent rate. The course notes reckon a jelly roll will cover a small quilt and thankfully after some googling Sleeping Bear Crafts appear to have what I need - a Moda Sleepytime jelly roll. All set for a gender neutral but hopefully not too monotone 'scrappy' bargello!

Introducing Black Cats

Having mentioned my Around the World foundation pieced quilt I think it's time to introduce it to the world. A couple of years ago at the Sandown quilt show I found some charm packs consisting soley of cat fabrics (from The Contented Cat). I just had to buy them but then I had to find a use for them too... We had just done a foundation piecing course so I had some 1cm squared vilene lying around so I decided I was going to make a quilt out of 1cm log cabins. Conveniently 1" strips work out pretty well for the seam allowances so each 6" charm square yielded 6 strips - just enough to make 2 log cabin blocks. Of course the finished blocks are quite small (7cm square to be precise) so after some quick calculations I realised it would take about 420 blocks to make a double quilt... still, I find long projects very comforting to work on - the finish line is so far away that you can just enjoy the sewing and you don't really have to look at the big picture until way down the line!

Because the cat fabrics come in just about every colour under the sun I decided to use black as the background fabric - I started off with plain black but my Flying Safari quilt taught me that too much plain black is really boring to look at so I later widened the backing to include black-on-black prints which I hope will balance nicley with the patterned cats.

Anyway, I went back to my project bag today and checked on my progress - I appear to have in the region of 140 blocks finished so I'm about a third of the way there. I think this one's been sat in the cupboard for at least a couple of years now so it really is time I paid it some attention. I took a few piccys to remind me to work on it some more so here it is: Black Cats

One Block - See the ruler at the bottom for size!

16 blocks together - 28cm in total (just over 11")

One Step Closer

I just got back from Brecon yesterday and was in a doing-things mood. The original plan when I took an extra day off work was to do all the housework and get the holiday stuff squared away - somehow it accidentally turned into a doing-some-patchwork day instead!

I have finally (almost a year to the day) finished the arcs for my New York Beauty. 48 beautifully pieced foudation arcs in shades of red and blue now lie on the ironing board waiting to be completed with inner and outer blocking. I set the sewing machine up in front of the telly, wacked the volume up high and 5 hours of re-runs later finally finished the last 12 arcs. I think i'm giving the foundation piecing a break for a while - the results are definately cool but the fact that I had to trim after every single piece really got to me - very hard to build up a rhythm. Still, finished now.

I also cut all the centres and outers for the blocks so now it's just a case of ironing the freezer paper, tacking the curves and overstitching them to the arcs.... I still love the look of the New York Beauty but all the funny-sewing means that I'm unlikely to make another and I have point-blank refused to even contemplate piecing the pointy border... I'll find some other way to finish it; anything but more foundation pieced spikes!


Next stupidly ambitions project to finish is the 420+ foundation pieced log cabin blocks for my around the world quilt. I am quite possibly mad but I'm a good couple of hundred into it now so it will definately get finished... eventually!