Liberty Squares Quilt: A finished quilt

It is so great to show off a finished quilt, it has felt like a long time since I worked on a big project and could boast a finish.  This quilt has been a lot of work to cut, piece and quilt and has been hours in the making but I am thrilled with it now and I am never parting with it!

All the top fabrics are Liberty tana lawn.  It is so freeing to put so many different prints and colours together in this haphazard way.  Providing you avoid similar colours being adjacent to one another, I don't think you can go wrong.  I love the mixture of dark and light, pastels and brights, as well as large and small scale prints.  Most of these fabrics are florals, but I am glad to have sourced some Liberty prints with animals in them.  It wouldn't really be a very "me" quilt if there weren't critters in amongst the fabrics!

I decided to have a go at "stitch in the ditch" quilting for two reasons; firstly, I need to perfect this type of quilting and to "skill up", secondly (and more importantly) my usual choice for tramline quilting felt like just too much work.  Stitch in the ditch meant half the amount of quilting I would ordinarily do.  I know that it's not a great job, but I don't think it's too shabby and I am definitely going to practise this again in the future.

The backing fabric is not by Liberty, but is a cotton lawn and goes really well with the front fabrics.  I bought the fabric in a sale and don't know which company produced the fabric.  The only thing I can say is that I love both the pattern and the feel.

The binding is from stash -  a simple pink and white stripe which is sweet for the front and goes beautifully with the back.

I am so pleased that I cut up some of my most recent (and most limited) Liberty purchases.  Alice and the Mad Hatter both make an appearance in this quilt.

 Quilt Stats:

Finished dimensions: 57" x 75"
Number of 2½" squares: 1064
Over 100 different Liberty tana lawn prints included

This quilt is staying with us.  I love it and it seems to be a hit with Brutus, too!

Thank you for visiting!

Happy Half Term

I'm off work this week for half term and I am enjoying every minute of it.  Half term means three things to me: lie ins, catching up with friends, plenty of sewing.  All three make me a happier person.

The mad patchwork quilt with lots of small squares is getting close to completion.  I have used 546 squares in total and there are very many different fabrics included.  Somehow I think it works.

I have loved pulling so many different fabrics from stash and putting them together in this crazy way.  I think these sorts of quilts are such a good way to use up bits of fabric, but are also rich for the recipient because you can play games with them; I spy, pairs, same but different, how many?  I now know who will end up with this quilt and I am sure they would use the quilt in that way and not only to keep their little one warm.

For the quilting I am doing tram tracks to create a lovely chequered look on the back.  This is going to take a while to quilt, and some bits are better than others because of my piecing.  But overall it seems to be alright and I know all that quilting will give it a lovely texture.

I raided my stash for the backing and found this fabric I bought at the NEC last August.  It's a lovely fabric by Creative Thursday.  There is a lot of white on the front so I am glad this has plenty of white but also has a saturated green background for contrast.

I now just have to choose the binding and the quilt will be soon finished.  I am sure I can see a Friday Finish coming on.

Happy stitching!

Circus Quilt - A finished quilt

 I know this is not the best quilt I've ever made.  There are a few glitches; some of the points are off, some of my quilting isn't straight and some of the small squares would have been nicer if I'd fussy cut them.  And yet, despite all its shortcomings, I'm pleased with this quilt.

This has been an improvised quilt because I did very little planning and drawing and only bought the solids late on Saturday afternoon.  I'm pleased that in a short period of time I managed to make something that looks like something that was long prepared and mulled over.

The backing I bought only on Tuesday.  I had intended to buy some monkey fabric but the lady at my local patchwork shop picked out the large spots and these were a no-brainer.  The boldness of the dots with a white background works really well against the boldness and deep saturation on the front of the quit.  The backing is Michael Miller # CX-5291 Diddly Dot (what a lovely name!) and I'm going to purchase some more soon because I think it is such a dependable and worthwhile fabric for both the front and back of quilts.  I can envisage using it again shortly.

I love variegated thread for quilting and I also love a coincidence.  This quilt is destined for Australia so the thread by YLI called Great Barrier Reef by Luana Rubin is a perfect match.  Obviously, I doubt the quilt will be used in any scuba diving but the Australia theme was enough for me to put an extra smile on my face during the quilting.

I've learned a two key things along the way here.  Firstly, good solids can make a great contribution when you have only a small number of novelty or picture fabrics.  Secondly, scrappy binding is a fun way to use up fabric which can also make the quilt a touch more interesting.  I will definitely be doing this again in the future.

Circus quilt - WIP

I really love making a quilt from small amounts of novelty or patterned fabric and combining it with largely plain or sold fabrics.  I think that this combination makes the novelty  fabric pop when this fabric may be the smallest component.

A lady at work has asked me to make a quilt for a grandson who will be born shortly.  I had some scraps of fabric I bought cheaply last year which I thought would be suitable for this project, but I knew there would not be enough to make an entire quilt.  I think the fabrics are from Timeless Treasures.  I made a quick dash to my local patchwork shop and decided three largely solid fabrics would work well here.

I cut the circus fabrics and some solids into 2 1/2 inch squares and then pieced them together into these squares.  I was quite random about how I did this so none of the pieced squares looks the same.

Then I decided to bulk the quilt out my bordering the pieced squares with the solids.  I really like how these look together.  I think the solids really make the circus fabrics much more interesting and exciting.  On there own, they didn't really wow me; now I really quite like them.

I have quite a bit of the solid fabrics left so I am going to make my first scrappy binding.  I want this to be a project with very little left over.  I've had a look at some scrappy bindings on pinterest and I think they can work beautifully, I think especially if the scraps are not too long.  Unfortunately neither of the two local fabric shops in Sheffield opens on Monday so I cannot finish this today.  I haven't chosen the backing yet so that will be a fun shopping decision on Tuesday.