Creative stuff

Quilting Part 4

The quilt is now finished. I sewed it to a fleecy blanket. This was much simpler than quilting. I matched the wrong sides together, sewed round the edge, turned it the right side out then stitched round the outside edge. Also made a small cushion with the left over bits.

 

Quilting part 1

I had quite a bit of material hanging about to use for my first quilt! The cow parsley was chopped off a pair of curtains that were too long (£5 in the Next sale!!), the white wallflowers and the lantern pattern (husband calls them onions) were from the outlet shop in Lancaster, the brown check stuff I bought here for curtains and never used it, the white stuff is an old pillow case.

Then I chopped them into 5″ strips. Sorry all the measurements are imperial because all the instructions Ive seen are by Americans. Where are the British quilters??

Sew three strips together lengthwise using a 1/4″ hem. Then chop across the strips to make a 5″ strip which has 3 different coloured squares in it (like a material sandwich). Im sure thats not the technical term but Im making it up here.

Here are all my 5″ strips once I’d chopped them up.

I think that’s enough for one night. The next thing you do is to sew 3 strips together to make a block of 9 squares. Im getting excited as its almost looking quilt like. If you want to know more about quilting basics by people far more qualified than me then check out this link.

Quilting part 2

I then had fun deciding which strips to join with with which. This took quite a bit of time as I was trying not to get any similar squares touching. I then stitched 3 strips together to get my 9 by 9 squares.

Here are all my 9 by 9 squares laid out. This was when Chris was away so I could just leave them there and noone minded!

So far I can sum up quilting as getting lots of different bits of material together that you like, chopping it up into smaller bits, stitching it back together, ironing, ironing, ironing (which I don’t like).  Chopping it up again and then more stitching followed by more ironing!!

Quilting part 3

The quilt is now all stitched together. You can just about see it draped on the back of the sofa. I now need to work out how to do the quilting bit where it goes from 2D to 3D squidgeyness.  Apparently this is called making a quilt sandwich and you need to baste your batting.