Hello everyone,
Well, when I last posted I doubt we could have predicted just what the past four weeks have brought to many places in the world.
My younger son had just come back from a month walking in New Zealand, the farthest place he has ever visited and a great adventure; he then started work for the first time, and suddenly all plans for the foreseeable are on hold....
I was ill two weeks ago, I am assuming with Covid-19 though cannot be absolutely sure at this stage. I am now well and back to sewing, but staying at home, like everyone else. Sewing is a great pleasure and good resource when everything else in life shuts down, and I hope you too are managing to find solace and pass the time with needle and thread.
So here are some of the various WIPs I managed to progress in February, and the part of March when I have been able to sew. Many of the WIPs were well advanced and did not need all that much work to complete them, so I have not turned into sewing superwoman in recent weeks.
First is a finished baby quilt: the block is known as Waterwheel, and I made a bigger version many years ago. This time I wanted to see if I could make it from Charm squares so I made the block smaller, 6 inches finished, strips cut at 1 1/2 inches. You need two identical Charm packs and some background fabric to make this little quilt. I used Later Alligator by Sandy Gervais for Moda which is bright and cheerful.
Here is a picture of the back: the block looks more complicated than it actually is to make, but I love how the pressing works to help everything fit together neatly. You will see I have done my favourite trick of spinning the seam allowances in the centre of the blocks for flat middles. This really helps when you come to do the quilting.
On the back I put a Riley Blake multi spot in flannel: the fabric pulls together all the colours on the front and is cosy too! The quilt measures 39 inches square. Thirty six blocks set 6 x 6 with a 2 1/2 inch plain border to float the blocks. Bound in a red Linea print from stash.
Regarding the quilting, this is one of the fun parts. I am not the world's greatest machine quilter, as I have mentioned in the past, but this design is straightforward to do with a walking foot. A smallish quilt like this is easy to turn under the machine, and there are shortcuts which help to minimise the number of turns and ends to tie in.
Definitely worth having a go as the quilting really enhances the positive and negative spaces within the design.
The other finish is a top which I put together and layered a couple of years ago. It is a bigger version of the Oakshott Little Boxes which I made here. I am ashamed really that I did not finish it off ages ago, as the quilting didn't take all that long in the end (I just got distracted by other projects, the story of my life...). But I am pleased it is now done and I can enjoy the finished product.
I loved working with the Oakshott fabrics and some stripes which may or may not have been an old Oakshott line. Stripes are ideal for showing off partial seaming (Tutorial in the post already referred to if you fancy having a go).
I was very organised and cut my pieces in advance so it was a real pleasure to sit at the sewing machine and select the colours for each block as I went along - chain piecing, of course!
Here are a few of the finished blocks which measure 5 inches finished. I tried to pair the fabrics so the solid colour related to one of the colours in the stripe, whether to co-ordinate or to contrast: great fun.
I kept the quilting quite simple this time (more complex in the smaller, first quilt) as I didn't want to distract from the linear, boxy design. I used a variegated Guterman thread which I had to hand.
The quilt measures approximately 58" x 78". There are 165 blocks, set 11 x 15.
You can see that I used up a lot of my surplus fabrics on the back (14 inch squares), and bound the quilt in a shot cotton I had to hand in sufficient quantity. It is a fairly neutral colour so hopefully doesn't distract from the colours in the quilt.
I have also quilted two other tops recently but haven't quite finished stitching down the binding so will not show you photos just yet. My main achievement before getting ill was to send off a quilt for a magazine, and again that one will have to wait. Amazing what a real deadline makes you do!
Anyway that's enough from me for now. I hope you stay safe and well in these difficult weeks when we all have to adjust to a new way of being, for the time being at least. I hope you will enjoy some peaceful sewing time as a distraction from your worries.
