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!