QUILTS AND HAND SEWING

At last I've finished a quilt I began last year and left over the winter. There are 480 2" squares all together with as many different materials as I could find. Inevitably some are used more than once.
I didn't want to use any pale colours in it so I've called it 'Darks and Brights' because that's what they are. I framed the multi-coloured patch with cream and then added a border of the material I used to back the last (handmade) quilt I finished. There are still scraps left over so they'll turn up in other quilts from time to time.

There are materials which have already been used in other quilts such as this flying lion but there are others which I haven't used before.There's still a pin in some photos holding the layers together before I Tacked it.

Other pieces are'fussy cut' like this shell,( and joined so well, as you can see!) or I've used up the last scraps so couldn't be too picky about the appearance.

 Teddy in a beret...

A Christmas cat...

A penny farthing cyclist piece which came from a long-time friend...the paisley piece above it I used in a Trip Round the World quillow in 1995.

 And these dalmatians are the last piece left over from a dress I made my almost 40 year old granddaughter when she was very much younger.

The backing is a new sheet bought a few weeks ago at a car boot; very expensive at 50p! The camera hasn't really captured the colour because it's  purple. I didn't quilt it so did Mennonite Tacking instead, which holds the layers together just as well, only differently. There are tiny pink stitches which show in the square below the red, the dark green starry and in the  pink square below that. (These photos all get taken as the quilt's on the line and moving in the breeze... )

 This is how the reverse looks with just these small stitches visible.

 I used cotton perle No.8 for the Mennonite Tacking and a sashiko needle because of the thickness of the cotton. Good old Hobbycraft!

I didn't put on a separate binding but turned the sheet to the front and stitched it with multi-coloured cotton in colours which related to the border.

And last of all, the all important label.

Another quilt to pack away...

I've got some handsewing on the go, too, just a little bit at a time, something else which I began while Kath was still in Stoke, I think, so several years 'old'. These Grandmother's Garden pieces aren't meant to go together, it's just that I make handsewn quilts in small sections so that I don't have to cope with the weight for a long time. The exciting part will be when I play at laying out other sections, when they're made, and work out how wide the finished quilt will be, then I can really get going on it.

I've also got some machined patches stuck on the grandly named Design Wall, which is an absolute must as far as I'm concerned and since it's my house I can do what I like. When I first came here this was another of the First Things I did - sticking sheets of polystyrene on the spare bedroom wall and stapling a winceyette sheet to them. Then drawing felt tip lines horizontally and vertically to give me a line to which I can butt up patches and keep them level. The snag now is, I can't reach the top line as I've shrunk in the last several years. Ho hum...

I saw a strippy quilt heading to Briony's blog and liked it so decided to use some scraps which seem to keep piling up and make one for myself. Picking my way through my UFO box I found some patches which I'd make so long ago I can't remember when, though they are larger than Briony's. So I decided to carry on with those. The larger squares mean longer strips which then means cutting more strips and so we go on... I try to do a couple of squares a day after breakfast and before I do anything else. Well, that's the idea. I made the last two on this row this morning before coming downstairs and carrying on with this blog, begun yesterday.

Just as a tail-ender - I threw out some old bread for the badgers last night (that's extras), opened the Top Shed door to get the three usual handfuls of peanuts and found the field mouse sitting on top of the plastic bin containing the peanuts. So I left four or five nuts for it... Years ago I had left the lid off an empty bin and in the morning there was a dead mouse in the bottom. It must have fallen in and then couldn't get out so I make sure lids are on tempting 'smelly' bins.

CRAZY QUILT WITH CIRCLES

At last (again) I've finished this top, bar embroidering a label. I made it at least a couple of years ago when Kath told me how to make crazy patchwork squares. Each square has four small squares stitched together so it was easy to find the 'centre of the circle'.

 I'm still using up yardage given to me by a friend and although it looks blue in the sunlight it's really a black background. I like small prints like this, it hides a multitude of errors! The bowl at the bottom is the badger's bowl where I put 'sloppy' oddments, like baked bean leftovers and last night, a couple of spoonsful of rice pud and pear peelings.

 I wanted to quilt it quickly because this Saturday coming is Cuddington Fete and I want to take it there. Lots of tiny handquilting wasn't going to be feasible so tried something I haven't done before - large running stitches. When I used to patchwork 'all day, every day' I kept anything that looked like a source of usefulness and by scratching through the drawer of Useful Things, I found the circular card insert of a tub of Wall's Cream of Cornish Ice Cream. I have no idea how many years ago I collected it but it was just the right size - 5 1/2". I found the centre by trial and error (Sorry, Bernard...) so could use the junction of the four small crazy squares to place it.  

 This is how the quilting turned out - I used a sashiko needle for the first time and cotton perle No.5.

My quilting stitches are a bit variable these days - That'll Do... I was quite pleased with the result and would do this size of running stitch again, especially for speed.

STRIPPY SQUARES QUILT - finished at last!!

I've finished this at long last - I posted about the squares when they were on my design wall -last September - so it's taken longer than that. I didn't have a very good winter so didn't do any work on it for at least a couple of months, I can't work when the weather is gloomy and my house faces almost due north so a dark house once the clocks have gone back..

Some of the materials I used, new, recycled and bits given to me.

The border material was given to me - a couple of yards or so - and I didn't really want to cut it up but I knew I couldn't keep it for always, so I used it. There's still some widths left, a few inches deep.

I kept the same material for the binding, too.

I like to have reference pictures of the reverse as well so that I can see, in the future, how I quilted this design. I knew I didn't want to do a huge amount of quilting so thought that just quilting 'in the ditch' would be sufficient. I'm not very good at Maths so hadn't thought it through that there are 49 squares all of which needed to be stitched round. How daft is that?

Kath made me some labels last year and I still have two left. I decided to use this one, which I bought at Threads and Patches in Bletchley, because the flower border matched the backing, though you wouldn't think so from the photo above. It's really small blue flowers and the border sinks into the background. The label's attached now. As usual - the Blog decided to play up and I had to call on Sarah to come and fiddle with it. A couple of clicks and it's behaving itself, Touch Wood!!!

I looked out another quilt top which I want to use Decatur knots on but decided it's not quite wide enough so, when I can bear to leave the second long-hexie English patchwork quilt I'm making, I'll make another border for the Crazy Quilt which is on the design wall upstairs.

I found a quote for stitchers everywhere:

'All my scattering moments are taken up with my needle.'

Ellen Birdseye Wheaton 1851.

ANOTHER QUILT TOP FINISHED

Another quilt top finished - and put on one side until (much) later. It was put up on my design wall this way so I tend to think of it as the right-way-up

but it can also be viewed like this. Same photo, you'll realise from the shadow, just turned one turn to alter the orientation. As usual it's made from new/recycled material garnered from friends, charity shops and, recently, car boots. I've found a way of getting round without stressing myself too much. The cream material used for the sashing, that is, the frames of each 5 1/2" square, was a car boot buy, a single duvet cover. Plenty of material and long straight cuts possible.
There are all kinds of things to spot, especially if you're asking a young child to find some of these things: a bird,

or a fish (this material has been in several quilts and I still have l-o-a-d-s left...),
or a tiger who has a turquoise face and wings!
There are sunflowers, too, lots of them because yellow is a good colour to have in a quilt,
And oranges, too - it's the 'hot' colours which make a quilt ping!

In a charity shop I bought a new cotton skirt which has a black background with bright colours and bands of different designs, like this zigzag. Apart from this pattern there are also stripes, plaids,checks and spots. I have a thing about spotty material!
The piece of white flowered material came as part of my last year's Christmas present from Sarah. She gave me 6 fat quarters and they've been useful to put into quilts. A Fat Quarter is a quarter of a yard of 44" wide material but instead of being cut as a long, narrow strip across the whole width it's cut as a piece half way across the width and twice the depth to make a chunky piece measuring 18" x 22". More puzzled now?

There are dandelions, too, stars (of different sizes) as you can see with the oranges, plenty of flowers, some ears of corn, a few hearts and holly leaves and just two cherries... Here and there are some Christmas scraps.

I don't intend to quilt it just now, I'm saving that for the dark days when I can keep my hands warm underneath the magnifying lamp, but while the light is still good-ish I'm going to keep machining. I've gone back to what I was doing some months ago in conjunction with this strippy quilt's blocks, random log cabin-y squares, unless I go back to making more story book houses....

One of my great-granddaughters has just gone off to Uni to study (so my daughter told me) forensic science - don't ask where all that science ability came from, definitely not my side of the family! But the pleasing thing is she's taken her Spotty Nightime Cats quilt with her and that was made about 10 years ago together with another in the same pattern and materials when the two sisters moved into a new house. The quilts are used as snuggle comforters and in the summer when you need just a light covering. Another duvet cover made the backs for these so identical quilts, just the cats and the moon in different places. Ah! The days when I could manage 'long' quilts.