26 Saturday Nov 2011
Posted in Create
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Last night, I put the finishing touch on Evelina’s quilt – I attached the binding and wrote the label. It is traditional to write on a new quilt for posterity. Usually, you include a name for the quilt, the maker’s name and location and the date of creation. I also included a birthday message:
When I find a minute, I will write a proper post about how I made it for the sew make believe blog – I’ll let you know when it’s done.
23 Wednesday Nov 2011
Posted in Create
I am home early after tonight’s sew make believe meeting because I am exhausted and feeling a wee bit icky but I am pleased to say that progress on the quilt is good! I have so far:
Still to do:
It is totally doable, force majeure events permitting. Eek! Oh and the title refers to the fact that I am unable to straighten my left arm due to too much crafting! Hard core!
20 Sunday Nov 2011
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This weekend I have spent a lot of time quilting. I managed to finish off a group effort for a special purpose – more on that later. This is just a tiny section to whet your appetite:
And since I was on a quilting roll, I made a bit more progress with Baby Girl’s quilt:
19 Thursday Aug 2010
Posted in Create
Over the past couple of days, I have managed to make a start on piecing Baby Girl’s quilt top. This involves making 19 strips of 25 squares – so far I have made 4.
The process is meant to be totally random but I find it hard not to make choices as I am picking the next square to sew. I also have to bear in mind that I have 3 fabrics which have a lot more squares than the rest so to ensure that I don’t end up with later strips having too many of these, I calculated how the fabrics should be distributed.
Making quilts involves a lot more maths than you might think!
Whilst I am on the subject of quilting, I thought I would just talk a little bit about using a rotary cutter and mat. I know quilters that seem to manage just fine without these instruments but I am slightly in awe of how they manage. For this kind of quilt (ie a patchwork made up of hundreds of 4″ squares), a cutting mat and rotary cutter, for me at least, are essential both for the amount of time that the cutting would take with scissors (I managed to cut all these squares in one evening) and also the uniformity of the squares; matching up these squares is going to be a whole lot easier having cut them using a rotary cutter.
It’s true that the mats particularly aren’t very cheap but if you make patchwork regularly then I highly recommend investing in some kit! This is what I have in my arsenal:
I am not suggesting for a moment that you need all of this but I would say that the large mat, the 24.5″ ruler and the 45mm rotary cutter are the essential items. The 12″ square ruler is fab for mini-quilts or sampler quilts.
09 Monday Aug 2010
Posted in Create
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On Saturday evening, ricardo’s band mates came over so I took myself upstairs with my Alias season 1 DVDs and started Baby Girl’s quilt. This was the first time I have made a quilt of this size – I have decided to make a single bed quilt – and the cutting job was immense, even with a rotary cutter. Still, in one evening I managed to cut all 475 squares of fabric.
The pattern calls for 520 squares for a twin bed (20 4″ squares x 26 4″ squares) but I was just short of fabric so I decided that rather than cut into the fabric I have for the backing, I would just do 19 x 25 on the basis that it won’t make that much difference to the size of the overall quilt (just 4″ shorter and 4″ narrower). If after working out my binding / backing requirements I have the fabric for the extra 45 squares then I can always cut more.
Next job: start sewing!
