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Red Batik Quilt Completed!

13/3/2014

A few weeks ago I took this red batik quilt over to Janette, who has a Longarm Quilting Studio over at East Bergholt called J-Quilts. My daughter Alice made this several months ago, while she was working at our local quilt shop during her gap year. Anyway, this weekend she came home from university for a couple of days, so it was the perfect opportunity to finish it. I am so proud of her - Alice's piecing was so neat and precise. Here's a closeup of the piecing and the black backing fabric is perfect for showcasing the wonderful quilting. Alice wanted a red thread to compliment her red batiks, and this looks really dramatic...

...anyway, she wanted me to help out by cutting her some binding strips while she was busy with her new hobby - crochet! So the binding strips were cut from the leftover backing fabric, and then machined into place, and finally slip stitched by hand to the back of the quilt. And yes, I managed to do all this while she was still busy with a ball of wool and a crochet hook!...

...this pattern is called "Pie Chart" and was part of a "Stash Pot Pie" programme that was held at my local quilt shop a few years ago. Unfortunately it's been really difficult to photograph these reds - they either look pink or orange, but they really are beautiful and rich. Alice is really pleased with her quilt - doesn't it look fabulous!!

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Red Batiks

17/1/2014

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My youngest daughter, Alice, worked at my local quilt shop, Quilters Haven during her gap year. Just imagine spending all day surrounded by fabrics. And threads. It would be heaven! Anyway, several months ago she came home from work with some beautiful red batiks -I wonder who she takes after??!! - and announced she was making a quilt. She had picked a pattern from my vast collection called Pie Chart (this was part of a programme called "Stash Pot Pie" that my local quilt shop took part in a few years ago...

.....this really does look beautiful - it is so dramatic! Well after she's finished it, she was saving all her pennies ready for university, so couldn't afford to get it quilted. We pulled it out of her cupboard when she was home for the Christmas holidays, and felt it too's too nice to be hidden away - and we both decided it needed to be quilted so she can use it!! She had a look at Janette's website, and chose a quilting design and had a think about colours of quilting threads. Today I'm off to Janette's wonderful studio to get it long arm quilted as a special treat for Alice - she'll get such a surprise when she's home for the Easter holidays - all she'll have to do is sew on the binding!

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Lattice Top - Complete!!

6/10/2013

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Yesterday I blogged about collecting this quilt from Janette, the Longarm Quilter - and I couldn't wait to get started on the final touches - both labeling and binding - to get it completed! I added one of my labels to one of the corners, and stitched this in place with white Mettler quilting thread to blend in with the white border on the front of the quilt. I measured 0.5" along both sides of the corner, so the ends of the label will be covered by the binding when that's in place. I altered the stitch length to 3mm, and stitched along the inside edges of the label, using the walking foot...

...I had dillied and dithered about whether to use a blue scrappy binding or a red scrappy binding. I really preferred the blue, and in the end there wasn't enough of the red fabrics to make wide enough binding anyway! I cut my binding strips 3.5" wide, fold over to make double fold binding, and stitch the binding into place 0.5" away from the edge of the quilt. I used a dark blue Mettler quilting thread, and a Schmetz top-stitch needle size 70...

...these "Wonder Clips" by Clover are really brilliant at holding the binding into place without worrying about stabbing myself with my pins!! I prefer to hand sew the binding to the back of the quilt, using the same Mettler quilting thread that I'd used to machine the binding onto the front of the quilt, and a John James quilting needle...

...and here's the binding all stitched into place using ladder stitch - and no sore fingers, as I wore my "Protect and Grip" Clover thimble for sewing all this binding on! I really love this scrappy binding - there are 7 different blue fabrics in this, and I think it works really well...

...and here's the finished quilt, complete with blue scrappy binding. I really love how this quilt looks - the colours, the stars in the quilting design and the binding. And here it is blowing in the wind - I absolutely LOVE it!!
*This pattern was called "Lattice Top" and I initially started this a few years ago as part of a programme called "Stash Pot Pie" that was held monthly at my local quilt shop Quilters Haven. The aim for this project was to use as many fabrics from your stash, without having to buy more!

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Decisions decisions...

5/10/2013

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Well today I've been over to East Bergholt to collect my "Lattice Top" quilt from Janette, the Longarm Quilter. She has done an absolutely AMAZING job as always - and I am just thrilled with this! I chose an all over stars and loops design for the quilting, and after much deliberation, I chose a pale blue thread for the quilting - and a gorgeous royal blue mottled extra-wide fabric for the backing (supplied by Janette) and just LOOK how gorgeous this is!! Now I have t make the decision over the binding - I want to have a scrappy binding, using all the left-overs of either the blue fabrics or the red fabrics - but oh dear - decisions decisions - which is it to be?? I must admit I do prefer the blue, although I know the red will make it "pop" I still get drawn back to the blue. Oh well, all will be revealed tomorrow!!

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Twisted Ribbon Border

5/8/2013

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Sorry to spoil things, but I just HAD to show this picture first of all!! I was trying to take a simple photograph of the completed quilt top this afternoon. The quilt was blowing gently in the breeze and it moved just as I took the photograph - anyway, I thought oh that will do - and posted it on all the quilting FB groups that I belong to, and received SO many lovely comments!! I've had lots of requests about where the pattern can be bought from, and I honestly have no idea. This was a scheme called "Stash Pot Pie" which my local quilt shop Quilters Haven took part in. It lasted for a year, and each month we were given a list of fabric requirements and the cutting instructions - the idea was to use up fabrics from your stash. Then on the day of the class we were given the instructions for making the quilt top, and had a tutor to show us the techniques and to help us. It was a great class, and I've shown some of my other "Stash Pot Pie" quilts on my blog earlier here. So if anyone wants the pattern, I would suggest they contact their local quilt shop for further information!.....

.....anyway - back to the quilt top! The next stage in the "Lattice Top" quilt was to add the borders. An inner border, an outer border, and in the middle a twisted ribbon border. The pieces for the twisted ribbon border had already been cut 5 years ago when I took part in the class for this. However it was then packed away and forgotten about! Having the pieces already cut out has certainly made life a lot easier. I thought the middle border looked a bit tricky, but found it wasn't that difficult after all, and I'd already joined pairs of the twisted ribbon blocks 5 years ago - once I'd sewn a few pairs together it wasn't so bad.....

.....I used different white tone-on-tone fabrics for the inner and outer borders, in keeping with the different tone-on-tone fabrics I had used for the blocks. This shows the way the borders will look when they are all joined together - HOPEFULLY!! A pieced border always looks really tricky, and I was wondering if it was going to fit.....

.....the inner border was a "spacer" and would need to be trimmed to fit, according to the pattern instructions, after they were sewn into place. I thought this would be wasting time AND fabric, so I did a few sums - and because my blocks were accurately pieced, I quickly worked out what measurement the inner borders needed to be before I added them to the quilt top. And yes!! my sums were right! The pieced "twisted ribbon" side borders fitted perfectly!.....

.....I then added the 4 corner stones to each end of the top and bottom pieced border, pressing the seams inwards, to make it easier to "nestle and wrestle" the seams. The top and bottom borders also went on very easily - no unpicking at all! Then it was just the outer borers to frame the whole quilt.....

.....now it's going to be packed up ready to take over to Janette as soon as she's back from her holidays to be longarm quilted - I was thinking about having an all-over meandering stars design for this one. As yet I have no idea what colour quilting thread to chose - maybe I'll leave that up to Janette - she always manages to pick just the right colour! Oh and for those of you who are interested yes this WAS made mostly with fabrics from my stash - the red and blue fabrics were left over from my "Road to Oklahoma" quilt, the background fabric for the blocks was from a fat quarter bundle of whites and creams - it's amazing what I've found stashed away in my very own quilt shop at Foreman Towers!!

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Lattice Top Awaiting Borders!

1/8/2013

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I couldn't resist sharing a better picture of the "Lattice Top" quilt top - it was so sunny today and there was just a cool gentle breeze blowing - perfect for taking a photograph!! The next stage is the twisted ribbon border and I'll tackle that at the weekend.

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Progress Update

31/7/2013

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Well I'm making good progress on the "Lattice Top" quilt! This is a quilt that I started several years ago and was part of the "Stash Pot Pie" scheme that involved using up fabrics that were lurking in your stash. Well I managed to piece the star blocks together yesterday and then I had the mammoth task of sorting through the pieces that had already been cut out for the 9-patch blocks. It was a bit like sorting out a jig-saw puzzle!.....

...once all the 9-patch blocks were sorted into piles ready for chain-piecing I was ready to go! I have used a grey Mettler thread for the piecing as this seems to blend with whatever colour fabrics I'm using. Oh my goodness there was SO much chain-piecing too...

.....well all that chain-piecing was very worthwhile, and the remaining blocks were quickly pieced together. I used a variety of white and cream tone-on-tone prints for the background, and really like the subtle scrappy effect.....

...well as you could see from the first picture, the blocks were all completed and I spent the afternoon sewing the rows together. This pattern uses a 5x7 layout. The next stage is the twisted ribbon border, but that will have to wait until the weekend! This is the first time that I've spend a few hours at the sewing machine since my surgery, and it's been absolutely exhausting - I'm off to bed!!

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Lattice Top Revisited!

29/7/2013

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About 5 years ago I took part in a scheme organised by my local quilt shop, Quilters Haven, called "Stash Pot Pie". The idea was to encourage you to use your stash - fat quarters, scraps, whatever you have. The pattern for each quilt gave yardage amounts for lights, mediums, and darks, allowing you to choose whatever colour palette you would like to use. This was great for people like me who often went on a fabric buying binge! Anyway, this one is called "Lattice Top" and I used a combination of red, white and blue fabrics (very patriotic hehe!!) and there are several different fabrics in each colourway to give it a very scrappy look. The quilt top is made up with 2 different blocks - a simple Friendship Star, and a variation of a 9-patch block sometimes known as Thrifty. As you can see, I didn't get very far with it! I'd made several star blocks and a couple of 9-patch blocks and some of the pieced border and that was all I'd had time to do on the day of the class. I'd packed it away with other started projects and there it had stayed. So, as my challenge with the "Tour de Fibre" is to finish 5 projects before I start anything new, I'm now going to tackle this one! This is going to take me a bit longer than my other ones, but as usual I'll update you regularly with pictures of my progress!

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Stash Pot Pie - "Pie Chart"

9/3/2012

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A few years ago, my local quilt shop, Quilters Haven, ran a monthly quilt class called "Stash Pot Pie" - the idea was to make a quilt using up your stash - (leaving space in your cupboards for MORE fabric hehe!!) - anyway, I raided my stash and produced a pile of green batiks - I know, I know - what a surprise! Fancy that! A stash of my favourite fabrics - batiks - in my favourite colour - green!! I bet my friend Eva would have a shock!! The name of this particular pattern is called "Pie Chart" - and I can I remember that when Pam taught this class her sample was made with some beautiful batiks too......

.....I love the variety of greens in this quilt. Batiks can be tricky to sew with, so I always use Schmetz Microtex needles which are really sharp and don't pluck the fabric. Anyway, this was one of the Stash Pot Pie quilt tops that I made that year, and like so many others, it was folded up, put in a box and forgotten about. ....

.....I had shown it to Janette a few weeks ago, and I decided that it needed a border before she quilted it, so I chose a grey batik, using 3½" strips of a similar colour as the background for the blocks (you have no idea how long this fabric has been hiding in my cupboards!!)....

.....then it was off to Janette to be turned into something beautiful. We decided use a dark silver thread that blended beautifully against both the green and grey batiks. I knew exactly which type of quilting design I wanted for this one - something feathery that would resemble fronds and ferns - so we chose this one, called Plumage.....

.....here I am busy machine-sewing the binding into place - as you can see, yet more batik!! I cut 2½" strips of batik for a double fold binding. Luckily I didn't have to buy anymore fabric for the binding as I another ½m of this green batik hiding in my fabric box, and I'd used the same fabric in the quilt - result!....

.....and finally the binding was hand sewn to the back of the quilt - I chose this beautiful extra wide fabric in a cream tonal print for the backing, (supplied by Janette) and then finished it by adding one of my labels.....

.....and here it is spread out on my bed - so you can see the full effect. This quilt measures 65½" square and easily covers a double bed. I am thrilled with it - thank you so much Janette, for yet again for making one of my quilts look so fabulous!! Whatever would I do without you! I made several quilt tops during these classes using "Stash Pot Pie" patterns, so look out for more blog posts about them when I finally get them quilted too!

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Sneak peeks revealed :)

11/4/2011

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Well I can finally show you the pictures of my latest secret projects!! Firstly a baby quilt for one of my new colleagues, Gemma, who is expecting her second baby VERY soon (this baby quilt was a "Stash Pot Pie" pattern, called "Humble Pie").....