Quilter's Academy - Volume 2 - Sophomore Year

Vol 3 - Junior Year


Monday, August 30, 2010

Vol 2 - Project 4 - Irish Garden (Milly's Quilt) - Quilting

After prepping this quilt I spend a couple of frustrating hours trying to get my quilting brain to kick in.  It just wasn't happening, the butterflies weren't working and I gave up.  Instead I distracted myself with a couple of NHP's (Non Harriet Projects) I've been working on.  These are a hexagon top I'm making by hand (don't all beginners make a hexy quilt?) and a crazy quilt which is loads of fun, allowing me to be more creative, a sometimes necessary change from all the precision and rules of the book quilts and I'm having an excellent time using non-cotton fabrics and pictures in my blocks.

Anyway - Milly's Quilt.  The call came Friday night that baby was on the way, (over a week early of course) so I spent a panicked Saturday furiously working at getting this quilt finished.  I'd chosen a plain-ish backing and I couldn't resist marking and quilting from the back, the front of the quilt having such busy fabrics.

Besides, the squares made by the ditch stitching was too hard to resist - so much easier to see!

The marking was finished by lunch-time (a record for me I think) and the quilting begun.  I'm still having trouble controlling stitch length, but this time around at least my brain kicked into quilting mode after a bit of a warm up.

The quilting is really hard to see from the front - honestly, I don't know why I bother, with such busy fabrics perhaps it's better to just concentrate on texture rather than design for the quilting.




Personally, I think the quilt looks better from the back - pretty pink polka dots and the quilting can be seen.




By 5.30 in the afternoon, it was all done and the binding started.  On Sunday the binding was finished and the quilt washed and drying on the table.  Whew!  Amelia Jayne was finally born late on Sunday night, a healthy 8lbs ?? (details are sketchy - Mum was tired)!  My first granddaughter!

I'm off to the mainland on Wed to say hello to Milly and give the new mum a hand.  It would have been nice to have Bryce's quilt finished as well, but I'm not going to try.  Rush jobs are rarely as nice and it's a pity really - the borders on Milly's quilt are rather wonky (by that time I was tired and just wanted to finish).

I'll be gone from the sewing room for a while - it's hand pieced hexy's till I get back to Tasmania.

7 comments:

  1. Lesley,
    Well done getting Millies quilt finished .... and on time too.
    By the way, every beginner quilter starts a hexie quilt ..... sometimes very exoerienced quilters finish them!

    Judy B

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  2. Lovely quilt. Congrats on the new granddaughter!

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  3. Congratulations on both your new granddaughter and a lovely quilt. It is quite stunning.

    Cheers, K

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  4. Hi Ladies. I'm back home and Milly is quite adorable. She looks tiny snuggled up in the quilt. Of course her other grandmother, a quilter extrordinare - made her a quilt too - a beautiful panel quilt featuring animals in soft pastel colours - all hand quilted and just lovely.

    I did however get a bit of hexie work done. I'm making 1" hexagons and sewing them into a mosaic shape which will eventually all be pieced into a tumbling blocks design. Each mosaic set uses 25 hexies and I've made a total of 3 sets - only 87 to go! LOL

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  5. Hello Lesley, nice blog and some great beginner quilting compared to my efforts, at least you get yours finished, LOL. I have 3 UFO quilts which have been going for so long that I don't like the fabrics any more, LOL. Congrats on becoming grandmother to Miss Amelia, she's adorable. Co-incidentally my granddaughter is Amelie Jane and I'm Granny Daycare 2 days a week for her. If you'd like to visit my blog you'll see her too.
    Hooroo,
    Christine, fellow Scquilter, in the ATC Group mainly
    http://missmuffettwo.blogspot.com/ "Lady Janes Journal"

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  6. Hi Christine - I checked out your blog - great work, nice cats and Amelie is very cute! Get yourself back to those UFO's - if you don't like the fabrics anymore, then these are ideal 'practice' tops. If the results are less than expected, then it's no great disaster and you get some serious quilting experience to boot!

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  7. I love the back of the quilt! The idea of one large piece of fabric quilted in beautiful colors keeps swirling through my mind. Have you seen Diane Guadynski's work?
    http://dianegaudynski.blogspot.com/

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