Christopher's quilt and update

Hi everyone,

I hope you are all keeping well.  Nearly another month seems to have passed since I last blogged: not quite sure where the time has gone.  

Not going out, the days blur, like the summer holidays when I was a child and had no idea of the date or how long the holidays still had to go.  The weather here has been glorious, also reminiscent of the summer days of the past with clear blue skies and sunshine day after day.  And it is still only May!  

The garden is powering on and we have roses blooming everywhere.  No forecast of rain for the foreseeable so goodness knows how the plants will survive through the summer months proper.

I have managed to do quite a lot of sewing amongst the usual domestic activities.  Here is a quick roundup:

I helped with a project locally, organised by a terrific sewing teacher, Tracey, to make scrubs for the local hospitals and other health professionals.  Tracey did all the hard work of sourcing fabric, providing online photo pattern instructions, cutting pattern pieces and bundling up sets for all the eager sewers.  I'm not sure just how many people she had sewing but it must be dozens, and it was a great feeling to be able to do something constructive to help the wider efforts of so many people.

I finished my last sets of tops this week and the project has come to its end - about 400 pieces will have been made in total.  Sophie and Miriam, my students, have also made scrubs, so having dipped a toe into garment construction, I am hoping that when we resume face-to-face sessions we may venture further into the area of dressmaking.

I have finished making all the blocks for my hand pieced quilt, Arlington Square: 41 full blocks, 16 half-blocks for the sides and 4 quarter blocks for the corners.  Next part of the process involves laying it all out.  As the blocks are put together on the diagonal, I am waiting till I have a bit more space to lay this one out.

My younger son had a week's leave a little while ago - he is WFH atm so not much changed for him, except that he didn't have to hide away all day in front of his computer.   He didn't feel the urge to offer to help in the garden during his week off, but I did persuade him to learn a new skill and he rotary cut the pieces for a quilt I had long planned to make for him.

Needless to say he got the hang of rotary cutting very quickly and chopped up two layer cakes in no time at all; so nice for me to just have to do the sewing.  With a careful cutting plan, we were able to squeeze the maximum number of pieces (3 1/2" squares and 2" squares) with minimal waste.  He stacked the pieces really neatly too!

The idea for the quilt started with the Wool & Needle flannels which are in navy, black and grey plaids;  because there were relatively few cream/beige neutrals in the flannel layer cake, I added in the lighter half of Jen Kingwell's Behind the Scenes Wovens.  Although different in weight, the fabrics have worked together OK.  It makes a very soft and cuddly quilt but possibly not the hardest wearing.

The pattern is by Carrie Nelson from It's a Dog's Life by Miss Rosie's Quilt Co., called 'College Man'. 

It's a variation of a double four-patch block with the design coloured so that the diagonal rows of light and dark small squares march across the quilt.  

I had fun splitting my seam allowances to flatten the middle of the blocks.  I try to do this always when making four- or nine- patches.  It takes a bit longer and I sometimes burn my fingers with the iron (!) but I do think it is worth it when I come to doing the quilting.

Because I have used a scrappy mix of fabrics the overall design does not stand out as clearly as if I had used a more limited range of fabric values in just two colours, light and dark.  But I rather like the hide-and-seek effect, and fortunately so does my son.

There were enough of the larger squares left over to make a border, and I found a stripe in my stash which provided an inner border which draws the lights and darks together.

I have finished the top and quilted it but still have to handstitch the binding, so I hope to show you the finished quilt when I next post.  Meanwhile I hope you are able to stay safe and well, and enjoy your sewing this weekend.

Holiday sewing and a finished quilt top

We have recently returned from a week's holiday in Somerset, in an area designated AONB (area of outstanding natural beauty) called The Quantocks which is to the north of Taunton and the Somerset Levels.  We stayed in a beautiful 17th century cottage and pottered about, enjoying the peace and quiet.

As our dog is getting on in years (he will be 12 years old next week, so he is an elderly gentleman now), I managed to wangle a couple of days staying in the cottage sewing while the other family members went further afield.  What joy to be able to sit and handsew for several hours without the sound of traffic and all the interruptions of 'normal' life.

I made good progress on Arlington Square:

and I also managed to work on Robin's Nest which I have hardly touched since last summer holiday...

We visited several gardens: Hestercombe (below)

and Lytes Cary (below) where there was still so much glorious colour, even at the end of the season:

Enough holiday snaps, before I went away I had a mad week of sewing to make up for the previous dry spell.  I chainpieced madly, laid out and joined my bright Log Cabin variation blocks together:

The laundry rack came in handy after stitching and pressing the long rows:

And here are a selection of photos to give you an idea of the size of the top and variety of fabrics used:

Lots of seams but they sit quite neatly - always press outwards, from the centre to towards the edges of the block.

I didn't fussy cut on this occasion, and I'm not a great collector of novelty fabrics, but sometimes the centre block worked out with something interesting to look at:

Using up scraps, especially in such narrow strips, had a surprising effect: it has made me REALLY look at some of these fabrics and appreciate them in a way I didn't when I used the same fabrics in other quilts in much larger chunks.

And at Hestercombe there was even a Log Cabin made from tiles on edge in the paving!

Enjoy a gorgeous autumn wherever you are, and some sewing contentment too.