As I had slightly more than a single jelly roll to use, I ended up with plenty of blocks to play with -
By putting together 4 of these blocks you get a bigger block – here are the first two I sewed together
I love the scrappy look you get and as you put more together you get a secondary pattern and a real sense of movement.
Now I’ve completed the centre, I’m off to buy some fabric for the borders and the binding
As I’ve enjoyed making one simple quilt, I thought I’d stick with simple projects and chose to make a jelly roll quilt using a pattern from the first book Pam and Nicky Linttot wrote -
I’ve used a jelly roll using batiks – in fact I had 1.5 jelly rolls (I’d used part of one for a small project) which enabled me to ditch some of the stronger yellow strips which seemed to jar with the rest.
After sewing pairs of strips together and then sewing two pairs into tubes, I used a ruler to cut out triangles -
Which when they were opened up, looked like this -
Having made all the blocks it was time to add some sashing and sew it all together. I came across this unusual green in my stash – clearly something of an aberration – but it seemed to be perfect for my blocks -
Until I’d put it all together, I hadn’t realised how big it was – another bed quilt I think!
And as I couldn’t imagine finding something else that would suit the background fabric so well, I put together a bar quilt for the back -
A friend of mine who is involved in the River Waveney Trust has been organising an auction of items and promises to raise money and asked if I had anything I was happy to donate.
I made the Irish Coffee quilt a number of years ago – it was exhibited at one of the Roothing Valley quilt shows and has covered one of our beds for a number of years. It seemed time to let it go to a new home.
I was delighted to hear that it had been bought by a man for his wife who is largely bed ridden. I so hope she gets pleasure from it as well as keeping her warm.
Sometimes it’s really nice to work on a quilt that doesn’t require matching seams and not cutting off points! I’ve enjoyed choosing the five fabrics for each block, making sure they are different -
And the dark blue for the sashing seems to provide a strong contrast to them -
When I last went to the Festival of Quilts at the NEC (two years ago I think) one of my purchases from Cotton Patch was a delicious collection of fat quarters by Dan Brown -
As they were far to nice to cut up into little pieces or dilute with other fabrics, I’ve been looking for a quilt design that would enable me to showcase them. And I found this design by Elizabeth Hartman which seems perfect -
So I’ve spent the afternoon cutting up my precious fabric ready to start sewing – I’m relieved to say that the pieces are quite large so it wasn’t too traumatic!
We have an horticultural and produce show in our village twice a year. The spring show is dominate by daffs, tulips and other spring flowers.
When all the judging is done and the prizes handed out, the flowers and other produce is auctioned off to raise funds. Aren’t these lovely -
And they lasted well too!
As I mentioned in an earlier blog, when I visited Jinny Beyer’s studio last November, I bought a couple of her kits so I could get to use her fabrics on some very nice designs. I’ve just made up the first of the kits – a fabulous tote – I love the rainbow fabrics which are foundation pieced.
And the contrast fabric which also is used for the lining really gives it a lift.
It was an expensive kit ($92) so I was rather disappointed that the foundation piecing was printed in two sections which needed to be enlarged on a photocopier. As I don’t currently have access to one, I had to draw out the foundation section on interfacing (which wasn’t supplied despite being required). I find this a disappointment with so many kits that not everything you need is included and given the price of this one, it could have been. Rather than putting in a zipped top, (again no zip provided), I decided to make a tab and button closure.
Having said that, it is a very lovely bag and I’m looking forward to using it a lot!
This design is a real favourite of mine.
I made it before when I made a set of cushions in NYC fabrics and wanted to make it again.
It’s quite time consuming in terms of working out the colour placement and making the right half triangles but I think is worth the effort.
All I need to do now is add a border and get on with the quilting.
With the weather being so miserable these last few days, I’ve been somewhat hibernating and am glad to have a hobby like patchwork to keep me occupied.
I finished the applique on the second of the cushions and then got on with the quilting. I decided to have a go at free motion quilting on my fairly new Bernina – as a long arm quilter I find quilting on a domestic sewing machine, something of a challenge. Moving the fabric instead of the machine takes a bit of getting used to! Actually it went reasonably well, though I didn’t manage to avoid eyelashes from the bobbin thread showing on the tighter curves even though I had a fiddle with the tension.
For this cushion I just free motion quilted the border then did a wiggly line around the tan large squares and a X through the smaller tan squares.
And here they are in situ – at last!
