Here's my George and the Donkey quilt - designed by Lynette Anderson - was originally started as a mystery quilt back in January 2023. I'd signed up to do this mystery BOM with Poppy Patch here in the UK, and I'd actually received the first pattern at the end of September 2022 but unfortunately I didn't get a chance to start it then. Each month another pattern arrived to make some beautiful hand embroidered and hand appliqued blocks, and what felt like MILLIONS of hexagons - until finally the quilt top was put together in May 2023. Then it sat patiently waiting while I deliberated over how to quilt it. Over the past couple of weeks, I've found an hour or so here and there and now it's finally completed. The cute red apple button was included with the first pattern of this BOM, and was stitched in place once the quilt was completed...
...the machine quilting has been kept simple, so it doesn't detract from all the pretty hand embroidery, and I've free motion quilted around all of the appliqued pieces. A few free motion quilted swirls and curls are set amongst the hand embroidery. The hand embroidery has been stitched with a variety of hand dyed variegated Valdani stranded embroidery threads...
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...I've machine quilted around each of the 64 heagon flowers too! Once the quilting was completed, it was time to choose fabric for the binding, and I decided to use the same red heart printed fabric for the binding that I'd used for the centre of ALL of those hexie flowers - this frames the quilt nicely. The double fold binding was machine stitched to the front of the quilt, then folded over and hand stitched to the back of the quilt using ladder stitch. This gorgeous backing fabric was also one of Lynette's fabrics, and is from her Garden of Flowers fabric collection - it really is very pretty. I've added a hanging sleeve (made with a leftover piece of the backing fabric) to the back too, so it can be displayed on the wall of my sewing studio...
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...one of my hand made labels has been stitched to the back of the quilt - I've used the butterfly and the bee motif from the front of the quilt, as well as scraps of fabric leftover from the quilt, as I like to reflect the theme of the quilt into the label for my special hand embroidered/appliqued quilts. I started my idea for the label by doodling some ideas on paper, then when I'm happy with the final design, I draw over the pencil lines with a fine Sharpie pen - this then becomes my template. The template is then taped to my lightpad (a very thin lightbox) and a piece of fabric is then taped or pinned to the template and the design can be traced onto the fabric. I prefer to use a Micron Pigma pen in a very fine nib, such as size 005 for this part - the ink is permanent so you do need a very steady hand! Then the hand embroidery stitches are completed, again using the same colour embroidery threads that were used for the main quilt. Once the label is completed, it is pressed and stitched to the back of the quilt, making sure the stitches don't go all the way through to the front of the quilt...
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...and here's the front of the completed quilt. It will be displayed in my sewing studio in soon, once I've taken down my festive wall hangings and given my studio a good clean ready for making lots more projects next year!
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