Category Archives: Quilting

I thought it was time for more craft. Above is an image of the quilt I am making with my Japanese Fabrics. I’ve based the quilt on a suduko puzzle. That is, I have nine different fabrics and I have used a Suduko puzzle to determine the nine patch layout. I allocated each fabric a number between 1 to 9 and then used a completed suduko as the guide for the fabric placement.

I’m going to use one of the fabrics for the sashing and the remaining 8 fabrics for the squares in the sashing.

The image above shows part of a row with the sashing pinned on – the numbers pinned to the middle are the block numbers so I can make sure I get the blocks in the right places.

On a completely different topic – there is a fabulous post about Georgette Heyer here.

I finished my Turning Twenty quilt! It’s not perfect, but I’m happy with the results. I can definitely see improvements in my patchwork and quilting progress. I think this binding is the best one I’ve done. It is a continuous binding and I found ironing it into place made everything work better. I hand sewed the binding to the back of the quilt while watching Larkrise to Candleford

The free motion quilting was quick and much easier that I thought it would be – I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to do anything else.

Here is a close up of some of my quilting …

I’ve quilted all of the construction lines as recommended by Harriet Hargrave and have started the individual blocks. I decided I was going to try free motion quilting – it’s a bit of a mess (as you can see in the above image) because I have just been doodling, but my stitch length is definitely improving and I feel more confident about moving the quilt under the needle. Plus the free motion quilting is much faster than straight line quilting (at least for me).

Here is a closer image of the quilting

I pinned together the layers for my Turning Twenty quilt. It is one of those jobs that requires a big block of time, so I kept putting it off, but today I decided it needed to be done.

I had almost reached the end when I ran out of safety pins. I tried to make do with little gold pins, but they just kept bending. So I went to the local fabric store and bought more pins and these binding clips (you might need to scroll down to see the binding clips).

Now to start the quilting …

I went to this store – my favourite quilt store – and bought fabric for the binding and backing for my Turning Twenty Quilt.

The orange spotty fabric is for the binding and the bottom fabric in the image is for the backing.

My neighbours have a lovely white bouganvillea. I love the contrast between the green and the white. It just seems crisp and fresh. I’m contemplating a green and white quilt – although I think my design might be too grandiose for my cutting ability (lots of triangles and narrow bits and accuracy is vital).

There is time for more thought because I’m not starting any new quilts until I finish my Turning Twenty quilt.

I’ve sewn all of the blocks together – still have to add the borders.

Despite the simplicity of this pattern, I have still had to unpick rows and sew them back together again. I think it’s because I’ve been trying to quilt whilst doing other things – supervise small children.

I do like this pattern and it has come together quickly, but I now think I should have used a range of fabrics rather than all the same (Freshcut). It’s not that I don’t like the fabrics I just think it lacks a bit of creative zest.

At this stage I plan to just use straight line quilting – probably hanging diamonds or a simple diagonal grid.

I’ve been quite pleased with this pattern. The cutting has been easy and it’s coming together nicely (although I did mix up some of my A and B blocks today – I realised before I stitched them together so the disaster was averted).