Category Archives: Quilting

College – Textiles – Term 4 – Final Project

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The choice of final project in textiles was to either design and make three tea towels, an apron or a Cornell-style fine art box. I followed my ceramics theme and chose the box, and thus embarked on a project to include every technique I could think of to transfer my patterns from my sketchbook to my ‘panoply of patterns’. Here’s the completed box, complete with my display sheets displaying its contents:

Completed-box---closed

 

Lots of techniques in here, from free hand drawing with a fabric gel pen, to free motion machine stitching, backstitch hand embroidery, iron on transfers, applique, fabric paint and quilting to name but a few…

Christmas stuffing…

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It’s no secret that I have become completely bah humbug about Christmas. So it was with a heavy heart I accepted a commission to make a dozen Christmas Tree decorations this weekend. For our tree. So you see why I didn’t turn down the commission! They’re a little rough and ready, but since they’re generally only lit up by fairy lights, who’s going to notice? 😉

Stuffed Fabric HeartsI used a heart shaped die to cut the fabric using my Big Shot before putting right sides together, sandwiching 12″ of ribbon in a loop between them and pinning it so the tips of the ribbon peep out of the top. I machine sewed round the edge, leaving an inch gap along one side, and then turned the whole thing inside out before stuffing and sewing the gap closed. I haven’t flame proofed them – might be worth a thought if you have a can of flame retardant spray close by.

 

Quilt No. 4 – ‘Puzzle’

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The weather has been lousy here all weekend, and rather than making cards – which was my plan – I ended up quilting. There was something about being under the quilt as I was sewing it and binding the edges that suited the conditions! I started it at the beginning of February at a quilting workshop I was given for my birthday at Quorn Country Crafts, during which I finished the top. I layered it and started quilting on Friday afternoon, did the quilted border and corners and binding yesterday, and I finished it with a hand-stitched label this morning. Most of the quilt is quilted with stitch-in-ditch, with the wide border needing a little more, so I created my own quilting design. The quilt measures 64x64in with binding, and as you can see was destined to go in our spare room.

Update 24-FEB-15:
Thank you to my testers, Julie and Anita, and to Tricia: the description of how I made the quilt is now available!

The instructions are an instant download PDF file, purchasable via PayPal by clicking the button below (you will have the option to pay in your local currency). The link will be sent to the email address that is linked to the PayPal account you use to pay. If you don’t receive an email, please check your spam folder! The instructions are for the above size quilt and do not discuss alternative sizes. If you want it bigger or smaller you may choose to adjust the border widths.

By clicking on the download button, you acknowledge that you are not entitled to cancel the order or receive a refund (Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 – digital downloads).
[NB: If you reside in an EU country other than the UK, please do not purchase via this page. Instead, please email me with your request and I will process your order manually. This is due to the new EU rules on handling VAT. Thank you.] [For clarification – if you are in the USA or Canada, go ahead and click the button!]

‘Lilac Time’ Quilt

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What do you get the man who has most things for his Christmas and birthday presents? Turns out that two quilting workshops are a very good idea! The first I went to was over six weeks in Jan-Feb 2012 at Quorn Country Crafts, where the lovely Margaret supervised the ladies and I in making a ‘Lilac Time’ quilt. The fabrics were chosen to fit into the spare room – which now needs redecorating… It’s amazing how much the costs mount – including all materials, wadding and backing as well as the workshop costs, this double bed sized quilt cost £200 before my time was taken into consideration! Don’t ever underestimate the cost of a hand crafted quilt! This one isn’t for sale though… The petal quilting in the feature fabric is to my own design and the rest is stitch-in-ditch quilted.

Free Motion Machine Quilting – more squares

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Four more squares from my ‘practice’ free motion machine quilting, using fabulous continuous line patterns as mentioned in my first bit of blogging about this.

Clockwise from top left are: Daisy Chain, Starshine, Do-Si-Do and Colorado Springs. I’m getting a bit quicker now that I’m getting the practice, and do recommend the daily practice – I did have over New Year off though 🙂

Free Motion Machine Quilting – another two squares

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I’m trying to do one free motion quilt square per day – it keeps me in practice, doesn’t put too much strain on my dicky wrists, and doesn’t take up too much time. I’ve also started sewing up the squares to see what it’ll look like completed.

As usual, my photography lets me down… but you get the gist. And here’s what the four of them look like bound together:

Free Motion Machine Quilting – first attempts

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Happy Christmas to you all 🙂

I’ve been at the sewing machine using one of the many books I got for Christmas – Hari Walner’s Continuous Line Quilting Designs. Featuring 80 designs, it relies on free motion machine stitching, unless you’re doing it by hand of course… I’ve decided to make a sampler quilt since my practice squares have turned out ok. It’ll be just calico and 80/20 wadding – may be a prototype for a silk dupion one? Here’s the first two squares, 10×10″ in size.

Reversible canvas bag

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I’ve got the sewing bug sooo bad! But that’s ok as it justifies getting the new sewing machine 😉

This afternoon I decided to make myself a stained glass window bag to carry all my quilting paraphernalia to and from future workshops. I didn’t have a pattern to follow, and worked it out as I went – there was only one minor glitch along the way fixing the handles, but got that sorted without too much unpicking. I’ve somehow made it reversible, but who’d want to hide the colour side? After three hours ironing, sewing and cogitating, here’s the results:

And I thought I’d made it big enough – but no, it’s an inch too small (16 inches square) after all the folds and seams were a smidge imprecise. The next one should be quicker 🙂

Quilt No. 2

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So buoyed up by my first patchwork quilt, I embarked on my second – and bought a new sewing machine (Pfaff Quilt Expression 4.0) as well! This is a quilt-as-you-go jelly roll rail fence pattern, as described in Popular Patchwork magazine (p.31, September 2011). I chose a batik fabric jelly roll from The Fabric Guild. The binding strips are a Hoffmann print, and the backing a dark brown batik double-width cotton, also from The Fabric Guild. Wadding is 80/20 cotton/polyester.

Apologies for the quality of the image – I’m finding photographing large quilts quite tricky! It is 52×61 inches in size, and is for sale – here’s the listing on eBay!