It has just got cold enough to add the extra layer to the bedding, so we now have this quilt on the bed. I made it about four and a half years ago, doing all the piecing on the machine I inherited from my mum, an 1897 Singer 28K, the star of the first two Youtube videos my husband I made.
This quilt was the first one I had made for years, and I had not yet worked on quilting at home - lack of time and space had a lot to do with it. I had the long arm quilting and binding done by Midsomer Quilting. They did a fabulous job. It's not such a brilliant idea to have the quilting cutting through the appliqué design, but I wanted the quilt finished, so I didn't care.
Here is Lily. You might remember reading about her before - coming to the sewing café to make dresses and also helping me to make a doll quilt.
Last December Lily had her tenth birthday, and I gave her a bundle of fat quarters. Being a true star quilter in the making, she was in no rush and stashed them away while she thought about what she was going to do with them. She is also lucky enough to have a lovely neighbour, Sandra, who is a keen quilter, so Lily often diasappears next door for sewing sessions. With Sandra she worked out this pattern, using the fat quarters and a few other scraps to make the blocks. Then they took a shopping trip, and Lily chose the strong fuchsia pink for the sashing.
And look at the result - isn't it fabulous! No wonder Lily is looking so proud, standing on the coffee table and peeping over the top at me. Just think how excited she will be once it is quilted and bound.
Welcome to the latest follower, Caralynne Viljoen - thank you for joining!
To see the old year out, here is the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Quilt, made entirely on two vintage machines, my 1927 99K hand machine and 1945 15K treadle, with hand stitched blanket stitch around the appliqué. I finished it a few days before Christmas. So far this is the best photograph I have been able to take. Big quilt, small house, poor light...
Soon enough I hope to have better photos and will tell you a bit more about it, but we are expecting visitors today so I can't linger.
So whether your plans are for a quiet time or a riotous one tonight
Happy New Year!
Love,
Muv xxx
I made this quilt for my daughter. She likes pink and green. It is a single sized quilt laid out on a double bed to show the border. It was pieced on my Frister and Rossman Transverse shuttle - easy with the seam guide in place. The method for this pattern is shown by Bonnie Hunter on her website Quiltville under the heading Sister's Choice.
For the border I did my own thing, separate blocks of strips. Bonnie's instructions for borders involves laying the whole top out on the floor - completely impossible in a small house.
At the corners the strips cross over each other. Feast your eyes on the mismatched seam.
Every quilt should have its imperfections - it's all part of the charm.
It was long arm quilted by Midsomer Quilting, and because I was feeling particularly lazy they did the binding too. They did a perfect job.
First and foremost, a big thank you to Bonnie Hunter at Quiltville who posted my video "How to Treadle" on her blog yesterday.
I have been a big fan of Bonnie's for some time now and have her to thank for inspiring me to get quilting again after a gap of about 25 years.
Also, a big welcome to all the new followers who arrived yesterday - Rhonda D, JudyBL, Not Lucy, Marianne, Leeanne, bmoubray, sharon bull and Shena Boes.
Now that so many of you have seen the video of the Serata treadle, here are photos of the quilt that I made as my first project using that machine. I bought the machine in May last year, and once I had cleaned and oiled it I was ready to set to work.
The quilt top was made using material left by my sister-in-law's mother, who died nearly two years ago. Pat was 89, a great-grandmother, and originally from Wisconsin. She left the States in the late 1940's. She married an Englishman and lived at various times in the Middle East and Africa because he worked for an oil company. Eventually they settled in England, but she would visit her relatives in the States fairly regularly. She was a tiny little lady, and never lost her big Wisconsin accent.
When Pat died my sister-in-law and I sorted through bags full of material that she had squirrelled away. Some of the fabrics had come from the States - in fact I have recognised some of them on the slide shows on Bonnie's blog being used in her classes. Pat loved green, so I had the challenge of making a quilt in her colours. Fortunately she had yards of the neutral print that I used for the background, and I added a few matching colours from my own stash where needed.
All the piecing was done in strips, an ideal method with a treadle, and a great way to give the machine a good workout after years of lying idle. To add length to the blocks, so I could get nine houses to fit the top of the bed with an even border all round, I hit on the idea of adding hedges.
The quilting was done on a long-arm machine at the quilt shop, Midsomer Quilting They did a fabulous job, I was really pleased. Then all I needed to do was the binding, which again I did on the treadle.
This was my fastest project ever - two months from start to finish - because I wanted to make sure it was ready for the next time I visited my brother and sister-in-law. It looked perfect on their bed, and my sister-in-law was slightly emotional. My brother liked it too, but he had to be told that it was a houses design. He couldn't see them. He thought it was just random patchwork. Blokes.
