Monday 9 April 2012

PATCHWORK FEST


Yesterday,  Easter day there was a parcel on the door step & one of our neighbours who we dont know that well had left us a hand made pressie of a beautiful chocolate cake.  The true spirit of Easter.  I was so moved that I wanted to give them a little thank you for being so kind, so as I am deep into my Patchwork finishing off fest at the moment I decided to make a small hanging or pot holder.  I used the Accuquilt cutter to cut the butterfly out of felt and machine blanket stitched it to this lovely daisy fabric, just bought from Bee Inpired.  I free motion quilted the background and added a straight binding & blanket stitched it down, it has triangle hangers on the back.  I wrapped it in Paperchase butterfly tissue paper & left it on their doorstep for when they came home.  My skills dont run to a delicious chocolate cake, must have taken ages to make, I do hope that they like their little bit of sunshine as its raining & grey here

A close up of the centre of the butterfly & a couple of beads for the antenna
At last I have finished the small wedding ring quilt started last year.  I have the wedding ring dies for the Accuquilt, there is a die to do the rings in tiny squares but this fabric didnt look right, so I used the whole ring
I thought that it might make a nice display for the Olympics in the Bee Inspired studio, so I got it finished

It was not easy to piece, the instructions were not at all good & if I had been a beginner I would have given up, took quite a bit of fudging to get it to meet.  All the fabrics were starched first & cut the recommended way and totally accurate, I checked.  I guess I must have done my own thing with the piecing & made it difficult.  I started quilting with small bubbles, there that was a mistake, hours and hours it took, I quilted all the light areas & left the rings to pop up, Oh then I was inspired after all of this to make a wider binding.  Hohoho.  Wide binding on the bias around really tight curves, thank goodness for the iron
Took ages to get the binding fabric correct, but I am pleased with the end result

The centre junction

Showing the binding & quilting

This is what I am most pleased about, I am all smiley this morning for working all day, flat out except for talking to Dale on the puter.  The top was pieced.  There is a story (there always is isnt there!!)
I was mooching around Poppy Patch one day looking for a bright orange fabric for a piece of machine embroidery I had in mind & the only thing I saw was a Jelly Roll, now they are not cheap Jelly Rolls, but you know how it goes the fabric burnt a hole in my head & in my pocket, this was about a year ago.  I used the fabric and now I cant remember what in, I think I distressed & half destroyed it, but hey ho thats what I do.  In the previous posts I have posted pictures of the Ricky Tims Kaleidescope quilts I have made.
I wanted to make one using the accuquilt long 2 1/2 inch strip die that I have, then I remembered the rest of the Jelly roll, these are cut to 2 1/2 inches.  My original design had strips of various sizes so I had to re-design to maximise these fabrics in the Jelly roll.  I didnt have enough of some of them so further adaptations had to be made.  It took me a few days working on the design & trial outs especially the 3 hours it took to decide where to put all the bright colours

Here is a tonal print of the quilt, see how important it is to get the elements right in their placement.  Isnt it amazing how lots of the fabrics look the same.  I didnt use a grey scale whilst designing as I wanted the challenge of the actual colours.
This was my original quilt design, see how I have varied it, I now have a centra star.
In the pack were two strips with swirls on, very odd considering that the fabrics all have lillies on them.  Easter Lillies, thats why I wanted to finish it on Easter day, in case you had not made the connection
I had to use this fabric somewhere & it is the only highly patterned one, there is a green version but one one strip of it

Ive written on the picture, but bother you cant see it.  Never mind it says  All the threads were chosen to match the fabrics, I spent a good hour deciding which threads to use, they varied between all the manufacturers, but the bobbin thread was one that dale sells, which was perfect for the backing, which is the daisies from the first picture for the gift.
All the quilting was free motion

Originally I had corners that were purple.  I had a Dasiy purple in the roll along with the Lillies, but it didnt look at all right.  My husband & I discussed this & I trialled out lots of other fabrics.  I found this now discontinued fabric on Doughties site & ordered some of the red purple & lime green.  I wanted to order them all but for once was restrained, probably by the fact that I had just bought a huge amount of fabric for an intended medallion quilt.  So the purple was removed & Shelaghs sparkle added then a red purple small border, everything was kept to 2 1/2 inches cut

This shows lots of the colours & how as in nature they all work together.  Mind you it took a very long time to get it right.
I quilted it all with a sort of echo lilly shape, which took far longer than I anticipated & then the cream was back to my beloved vermechelli.  The  border was a trailing leaf design.
Then it was the binding.  Hours and hours of raiding my stash.  I had the lime and the purple ...wrong and wrong..I tried ochres & neutrals...wrong and wrong.  I sat on the floor surrounded by fabric, I have a huge stash which is not a brag, I have been quilting for a very long time & used to make patterns & quilts for a fabric manufacturer, in those days the fabric arrived by the box full.
In the end I got really fed up & decided to chop all the pieces I had left from the quilt into 2 1/2 inch squares and join them together.  Random no...lol...I do like some order in some things, this took a very long time, which was a bit daft, but I FINISHED IT ...I even hand finished the binding whilst the Masters golf was on.  I feel shattered today, but my EASTER LILLIES is finished.
Now its raining so maybe another of the pile might get started today hmmmmm????
Thanks for reading x
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1 comment:

  1. what nice neighbours you have. your work is inspiring and as beautiful as everxxlynda

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for your comment, regards Shelagh

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