Ginger Bliss

A wet weekend meant I could not garden, so I sewed instead; not a hard choice to make.  I managed to finish this quilt which I have called Ginger Bliss, in homage to Kathy Doughty's quilt called Ginger Snap in the first Material Obsession book and Amy Butler's fabric line, Ginger Bliss, which provided the inspiration fabric (borders and setting triangles and diamonds) and some of the other fabrics in the quilt.

As usual I have gone off piste a bit and have made the quilt bigger (78"x 88") and changed the borders, but I have followed the same path in finding inspiration in Amy Butler's luscious fabrics plus a sprinkling of all sorts from my stash of some years ago.



I finished piecing the top in July 2011 and finally layered it and started the quilting before Christmas. Having been distracted (so often the case recently), the bundled up quilt sat on one of my chairs for 5 months till I decided last week it really was time to finish it once and for all.  As usual, I find I spend more time putting off than I ever do sewing, and the finish was much quicker than anticipated.



I love Kathy's handquilted circles, but chose to do the petal/flower continuous machine quilting which I wrote about here.  Although this is a much bigger quilt the principle is the same and I was able to quilt for a long time before having to stop - more often because the bobbin ran out than for any other reason.  This continuous line quilting limits the number of ends needing to be tied in, always a plus in my opinion.



The backing is (I think) Temple Flowers by Amy Butler and the binding which I absolutely LOVE, is a tiny stripe with a wiggle in it from Jo Morton, would you believe.  Despite Jo's fabrics mostly being in the reproduction style, this one works perfectly with the big modern florals - a lesson to me to keep on thinking laterally, and not to put fabrics into boxes by 'type', literally as well as metaphorically.



I also managed to progress my Quartet BOM and made this little stack of taupe beauties by the foundation piecing method.  Just finished trimming them today.  I have now done seven of the 9 blocks and am eagerly awaiting the remaining packs and sashing fabric from Pinwheels.

 

This is my WIP for today, linking to Lee at Freshly Pieced: WIP Wednesday.

As my garden is always a WIP, here's a quick blast of colour to end with.