You may have noticed that there has been lots of sewing taking place at A-C Towers of late. I've been really enjoying spending time at my sewing machine, but if you're here for the knitting, don't worry, there are knitted FOs this week as well! I think that my strength of willpower on staying faithful to knitting projects has resulted in lack of will power with quilt projects. At one point last week I had 5 quilts on the go! Luckily I have now finished a few of them.
First up are two small cot quilts. I made the quilt tops some weeks ago, but hadn't got round to the quilting or binding. The tops were pieced with the leftovers of a Moda Dilly Dally Jelly Roll. I simply joined the strips to form a rectangle, sliced the rectangle into two pieces and then added borders.
I finished these off by a doodling style of free-motion quilting. I'm still very much practising this technique, and in places it's really not that neat, but the stitching is doing its job, so I decided not to worry about it too much. By the time this post goes live these will be on their ways to their new homes, where I hope they will come in useful.
I have also finished the quilt I started on my weekend at The Sunday House. I learned so much from Anne over the weekend, and this quilt hopefully marks the start of improved piecing and quilting techniques.
Once finished, the quilt has gone straight into use in the sitting room. Jim wasn't too keen to be snapped using it! It is warm and snuggly, and I'm really pleased with it.
The central panel uses the disappearing 9-patch technique and I made it from 2 Charm Packs from the Moda Sophie range. The colours are right up my street, with aqua, teal, red, brown and pink. The centre has very simple shadow quilting around the central blocks, and I'm really pleased with how that portion looks.
Around the border, I quilted in parallel lines. I'm not sure what the best way would have been to work this section. I started off by just keeping the walking foot lined up with the ditch and then with the previous line of quilting. After a couple of rounds I realised that I was drifting in some areas, and it was getting further and further from the true line that I was aiming for. Rather than picking it out, I swapped to using my metre ruler to draw on the lines, and then just sewed along the lines. This was much easier to sew, and I would probably use this method again, but am I missing some easier technique?
I had originally thought that I would give this quilt to someone for Christmas, but I don't think I can bear to part with it. I'll just have to sew a few more!
Ooh, lovely quilts, especially the baby ones! I've not tried free motion quilting yet, but I've got a darning foot for my machine now, so I'm going to give it a go next time I do some quilting :)
Posted by: Helen | 22 November 2011 at 11:27 AM