Following on from my speedy success with my first overlocked (serged) quilt, I popped into Quorn Country Crafts for some spare overlocker needles, and I left with some woolly nylon spools, the needles, a layer cake and another jelly roll of fabric; oh, and an offer to talk to me about leading some quilting classes later on in the year.

For the uninitiated, a layer cake (in quilting terms) is made up of 42 10×10″ squares of coordinating fabric. There’re many different ways of cutting up these squares, but it does also allow for larger squares to be used in patchwork quilting. This is my first layer cake quilt, and I’ve kept to straight lines so that I can use my overlocker for all but the quilting.

Here’s the interim pics – trialling the quilt-as-you-go overlock technique I’m developing – and I’m pleased to report success!

 

The benefit of quilt-as-you-go is that I can quilt each strip rather than wrangling a super king size quilt. My mock up design took a little while to work out, but I think I’ve enough squares left over to bind the edges of the quilt as well:

The quilting design on the calico squares is one of my own continuous line free motion patterns, based on my tangle pattern design Curly Braces Too.

The rest of the quilting is mainly stitch-in-the-ditch and ever decreasing triangles. The binding between the strips is also sewn in place with the overlocker, and on the rear, the overlocked edges are so much easier to butt together and then hand sew the back binding into place:

More to come as time and commissions allow – holiday time is over, work starts tomorrow.

 

[Overall design inspired by Lucy’s Beach Quilt]