Finding the right gift for a 90 year old is pretty tricky. I've spent weeks thinking about what my Gran would like most on her birthday, and other than the desire to see all the family around her, I can't think of anything that I could purchase. At least not anything that would be really meaningful.
Given this feeling, I thought that I would make her something. Over the years my Gran has been a highly accomplished knitter, seamstress and embroiderer, but as far as I am aware, she's not really done much quilting, so it seemed like a nice plan to make a quilt to mark her 90th.
When I was in London in January, I picked up a fat quarter bundle at Ray Stitch that included 12 FQs from the Savannah range by Sara Morgan. The colours were perfect for Gran - the dusty raspberry pink and turquoise-green are colours I really associate with her, and her home.
As an afterthought, I chucked this bundle into my bag for the weekend at The Sunday House, along with a smaller FQ bundle that my lovely swap partner Sarah had sent to me for Christmas. I figured that while I had such a wealth of quilting expertise at my fingertips, I should ask for suggestions for a design to use...
We settled on a simple design that Anne calls Battenburg (after the cake!). To start with, I cut all of my fabric into the largest possible squares. As I had a mix of UK and US fat quarters, I cut to 8.5". You can see the cut squares above - I fanned them out so that Sarah could see how well her fabrics went with Savannah!
The were then sorted into sets of 3 well contrasted designs, and the groups of 3 were cut and pieced in one set. The aim of doing it this way (rather than chain piecing the lot) was to avoid incorrectly mixing the pieces. They are currently well organised to give good contrasts.
By the end of Sunday, I had a good stack of blocks sewn together, and I think I have about 5 more hours of piecing to do before all the blocks are complete. Although it's not a complicated design, each set of 3 blocks is taking around 25 minutes to piece together, so it adds up.
I've ordered some more of the pink flowers to use as borders, and I'm going to make a very skinny fillet in the deep turquoise green to frame the central panel. Now I just need to get back to my production line and get this bad-boy done. :-)
