I've got three quilt-as-you-go bed quilts under construction at the moment. The first is Tula Pink-heavy and I'm quilting it onto strips the width of the finished quilt. Each full-width strip is two blocks wide. I'm using irregular straight lines so that when the strips are sewn together I won't have the added worry of matching the lines of quilting.
The second and third quilts are twins. A total of 84 machine appliqued blocks go to make these babies.
I've done all the appliques and have started the mammoth task of quilting each one onto it's batting square.
First I pin the block onto it's batting to stop it moving around. Compared to basting an entire quilt sandwich this is easy peasey lemon squeesey.
The beauty of quilt-as-you-go is that a) each individual square is sooo much easier to handle than an entire quilt, and b) that I can undertake machine quilting that I would never be able to attempt on my cheap and cheerful domestic machine - for example this pictorial quilting:
It's so easy to stop in the middle of the block, pull your threads through to the back of the wadding and tie them together say in the knowledge that no one will see the knot once the backing is in place!
I've also been able to play with echo quilting:
And with lines that do not cross the applique:
I've had all sorts of fun!
The Tula quilt will be finished soon (hopefully) whereas the applique quilts will be with me for quite a while longer.
Linking up with WIP Wednesday on freshlypieced.com.
I've been so snowed under with works in progress that I haven't had time to blog about them!
Here is a Tula Pink-heavy quilt top that's *nearly* finished.
I love all the leafy, new-shoot, springy greens. The majority of these blocks are made with Tula's 'Prince Charming' and there are a couple of liberty prints in there left over from another project.
And then there's the two identical bed quilts that require a LOT of applique and a LOT of thread!
I've become a real whizz at satin stitch after appliqueing 672 petals - I'm halfway through now, so only another 672 to go! Yay! :-/
I'm also still working on the English paper pieced throw quilt for my parents
and a tee-pee!
I've also had some work done on my house and that involved moving the entire contents of my sewing room into my son's room for a week. Still, it meant that I was able to get some much needed shelving up at the same time.
It's not a perfect system, but at least I can see where everything is.
As an added bonus my two sewing machines, Joan and Pearl, have their own shelf now.
My garden has also lured me away from my sewing to-do list...
What's not to love about cowslips? This one has self-seeded into my lawn and I've mowed around it because it's so sweet.
Spring is a wonderful thing!
Linking up with
WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced.
Here's a space oddity I made for a friend's birthday.
It's a continuation of my love affair with heat'n'bond and an experiment with machine and hand embroidery.
I found this Bowie card in a great little card shop in Warwick months ago. Of course I couldn't actually find it when I needed it, but in the meantime I fancied a go at making my own Ziggy.
I stole I photo of my Muse from Facebook and used Picasa to alter the photo until it was easy to discern the main shapes. I then used another piece of free software, Microsoft Paint, to over paint until I had only the features I wanted to keep.
I then used a lightbox to trace the three shapes to be made with fabric - the face, the beard and the red lightening bolt.
The flesh tone fabric came from a bin of pre-cut fat quarters at my local fabric shop and the beard and background are Kaffe Fassett shot cotton for added Stardust-iness.
I used a metallic embroidery thread and machined the purple flash then hand embroidered the rest of the features in. It was really tricky getting the hand stitches through the layers of fabric and heat'n'bond but it all came together in the end!
I was planning to use red sequins on the red flash but thought I stood a chance of making a dog's dinner of it, especially given the stiffness of all those layers.
The birthday boy appreciated his Bowie-fication - or so he claimed!
Linking up with TGIFF at Quilt Matters :).
