My little basket of applique and English Paper Piecing notions is almost fit to bursting! Funny how each branch of patchwork quilting calls for another collection of bits and bobs 🙂 My latest purchase is a 2oz bottle of Roxanne Glue-Baste-It.
Ridiculously expensive for something that looks suspiciously like PVA glue but HeyHo I was sold on the precision dropper that administers dots of glue little bigger than a pin head.
I’m using Glue-Baste-It to temporarily adhere my EPP pieces in place on the background fabric. I had been using the SewLine glue pen.
What a special occasion! My lovely parents are celebrating 60 years of marriage. They have stayed faithful to the vows they made all those years ago. I’m sure it hasn’t all been plain sailing but they made a commitment to one another and have created a marriage which is a great example to follow and a source of much stability and love for us all.
My brother gathered together some photos and had this card made for Mum & Dad.
On this rather grey, chilly December day we have managed to have some – socially distanced – time with them. They stepped out of the warmth of their home for a photo shoot before moving to the conservatory to unwrap their cards and gifts. Six of us stood outside and watched! What strange times! Still! There were lots of smiles. The Postman arrived with a big handful of letters while we were there. One envelope contained a very special card – signed by Her Majesty the Queen 🙂
We are looking forward to a proper family celebration to mark this wonderful milestone when it is deemed safe to gather together.
The bed runner was not a surprise gift as I’d wanted my Mum’s input on colour and design before embarking on the making of such a prominent piece of decor. However Mum & Dad hadn’t seen the whole design before today.
Sorry about the strange angle – if quilts are difficult to photograph then bed runners are just about impossible!One of the four Flower Basket blocks.The quilting shows more on the back.I didn’t label the runner but I did stitch a message into the design.
I made the runner using Kona Solids fabrics, Hobbs 80/20 wadding and Aurifil threads in three colours for the quilting. The runner measures 20″ wide by 86″ long.
Linking with Kelly for Needle and Thread Thursday. Kelly is getting into Christmas mode making napkins and there are plenty of inspiring makes to see via the linky gallery she shares 🙂
Oh! Dear! I have made very heavy weather of placing my Quilter’s Color Quest Bear Paw blocks on point! I decided to separate out the scrappy blocks by adding narrow sashing. That went OK! But my poor brain struggled to figure out the layout once it was time to introduce the setting triangles and stitch the rows of blocks to each other.
The puzzling Bear Paw blocks on-point but on their sides and confusing me!
Thankfully I did find a helpful guide to ‘Piecing On-Point Quilts’ on the quiltnotes.com website, giving details for creating on-point layouts with or without sashing strips. When I couldn’t visualise the layout the website photos and explanations kept me going, despite not being able to see where I was going – if you see what I mean! The website also has a very handy table giving the cutting dimensions for the setting triangle and corner triangle fabric – calculated for whatever size blocks are being used. I made triangles a bit bigger than necessary just to be sure there’d be some excess fabric all around the edge of the quilt top.
Sewing the rows together took a good deal longer than I’d estimated. This morning I sat down and stitched the final couple of long seams through the centre of the quilt top and added the little corner triangles. Now I can hang the quilt the right way up it all seems quite logical but when the layout was under construction, lying sideways-on on the design wall it really did give me trouble!
And now, I must ask you please not to judge me….
But, even in the midst of piecing the Bear Tracks quilt, I’ve started another project! 😀 This little project (at least I hope it is a little project) came about because I’ve been de-stashing.
I found the baby quilt panel and thought about adding it to the fabrics currently for sale in my Etsy Shop. However, the panel is produced by Disney and the message on the selvage clearly states it is ‘intended for non-commercial home use’. Rather than risk a legal tangle with such a mighty corporation I decided to make the panel into a quilt and keep hold of it as an item ready to gift. I plan to quilt it using a walking foot, just following the patchwork pattern printed on the panel – keeping it simple 🙂
I found a piece of Civil War reproduction fabric that fits really well with the dusty colours of the panel and is just the right size to use as the backing. I had several off-cuts of Quilters Dream Green wadding stored away. I stitched three pieces together to fit this project. I hunted around for a green fabric to use as binding but couldn’t find the right shade in my stash. Using a Kona Solids colour chart I chose ‘Peridot’ as a good match and thankfully managed to order some from a UK store. Six months into the pandemic it’s not always possible to find specific fabrics or threads is it? I wonder how long it will be before production and supply chains are running as they were pre-Covid?
Linking with Kelly for Needle and Thread Thursday. Kelly has designed and finished a quilt – soon to be a pattern – and shares some of the quilts from last weeks link up.
So, designing and making a Bargello quilt, how hard can it be? 😀
There are plenty of Bargello patterns to be bought, found in books or available for free on the ‘interweb’… but none seemed to quite fit the fabric quantities I had available or the idea I had in my head…
Not only are there plenty of patterns available there are also a considerable number of cutting and piecing methods to choose from – both to follow in books and watch on YouTube. It took me a couple of days to assimilate the information I’d found, play around with pencil and eraser and look wistfully at the fabrics. Finally it was time to put a plan into action 🙂
Fabric: I used a Moda Jelly Roll, ‘Circulus’ by Jen Kingwell Designs, forty width of fabric strips cut 2½” wide. This collection conveniently has four each of ten colours making it easy for me to sort them into four matching sets. Other Jelly Rolls would need more careful sorting and maybe a few substitutions to replace those fabrics that wouldn’t play well in a Bargello pattern i.e. large, widely spaced designs which could break up the pattern across the quilt top.
The method: After much deliberation and many ‘huhs?’ followed by a few light-bulb moments I decided to employ a strip piecing ‘tube’ method to make this Bargello quilt. After all the research, I found most affinity with a tip-filled
