Welcome to Saturday Quilting Bring & Share. Bring along your projects, enjoy taking part in the sharing of ideas, tips and news with our Worldwide Quilting Community. To join in just click on the links below, remembering to leave encouraging comments and tips wherever you can.

I had a ‘pedal to the metal’ patchwork-quilting day on Thursday. Home alone from 6.15am-9.30pm on a rain washed day gave me the perfect opportunity to work towards a finish. On my design wall were twenty 9½” Rail Fence blocks. I spent the morning piecing the quilt top, including adding borders and making the binding, all to the sound of rain drumming on the roof above me.

Then I hit a bit of a bump when I realised I hadn’t bought quite enough of the extra wide backing fabric. Doh! I like pieced backing but it does take (me) quite a bit of time to figure out fabric placement and stitch those long seams… Ah! Well! It turned out to be serendipitous as the addition of the black on white text fabric makes the bright geometric print pop!

Once the backing was completed I regained momentum, helped in no small part by discovering an off-cut of wadding the perfect size for this project  I had been expecting to have to stitch some wadding  1154offcuts together so this really did feel like a bonus! And I could award myself extra Brownie points for my system of labelling wadding offcuts with a pinned note giving the type and SIZE of the piece (this really does save time and a lot of unfolding, measuring and re-folding when trying to find the perfect offcut!).

I pin basted the quilt sandwich then headed into the kitchen to do a bit of batch cooking (am I a domestic goddess or what?). While I was cooking my mind was still on the quilt…. So when I returned to the sewing room I’d decided on the pattern of quilting – a simple arc echoed from one corner across the whole quilt. After a quick trial of threads I surprised myself by finding a bright orange, Aurifil 1154, worked really well.

I used a dinner plate and a Hera maker to get the arcs started – the first arc was the third one in from the corner in the photo. The stitched arcs are 1½” apart.

Although I didn’t quite get this quilt finished on Thursday I had made such great progress that it only took a couple of hours on Friday evening to complete the quilting and machine stitch the binding in place.

This week I will give my sewing machine a rest while I write up the Rail Fence pattern in preparation for the Workshop and Sewing Social next Saturday (there’s still time to book if you live close by – email me quilted2pants@gmail.com for details).

Here are some links into our Worldwide Quilting Community:

A blog post entitled ‘Quilt Math Made Easy‘ is sure to catch my attention! I scraped through school maths with a bear pass vowing never to have anything to do with the subject again! Of course, I discovered real life is full of maths! From drip and drug calculations as a nurse to patchwork quilting and working in a fabric store, maths is unavoidable! I’m definitely ear-marking Krista’s blog post as an aid to patchwork calculations. She uses a set of wonderfully bright scrap blocks to illustrate how to set blocks on point and calculate the size of the setting and corner triangles needed to square up the quilt top.

Christa Watson is posting a series of videos featuring her modern quilt designs. Each video contains information about the patchwork, Christa’s preferred method of basting and lots of footage of her quilting  – different patterns using walking foot and free motion stitching. In the episode ‘How to Free Motion Quilt Edge to Edge: Jagged Stipple there’s a great mix of handy tips and well filmed quilting (quilting starts around 8 minutes into the video).

Loved watching a video Rona the Ribbiter made whilst on her trip around the UK. She met up with Tracy Perks who has her sewing studio on a little boat on the Grand Union Canal. The floating studio has solar panels, container gardens and a log burner to stay cosy in the Winter. Well worth a watch! And great to see another Atlantic alliance being formed!

JanineMarie’s foundation pieced Flying Geese make a perfect border. I like her addition of little squares to make ‘Migrating Geese‘ thus broadening the border to fit in with her plans for the rest of the quilt.

Linking with Michelle for the Beauties Pageant. Michelle has been distracted in her preparations for Quilt Con by the sudden need to make beaded friendship bracelets!

Happy Stitching!

Allison

For those of you in Hampshire/Berkshire area of the UK do consider joining the little group of patchwork-quilters taking part in my Saturday Workshop & Sewing Social. We’ll be making a Rail Fence quilt top using super-quick piecing techniques! Email me quilted2pants@gmail.com for details and to book.