The quilt is finished... The big reveal!

So... It has finally been done...

And what a journey it has been...

Once all the panels were finished I stitched them all together to make the complete front of the quilt.

I then cleared my living room to make enough space to lay down the backing, wadding and front panel on the floor.

And then the grand pinning project began...

Once pinned it was on through the sewing machine...

The weather has been extremely hot in Yorkshire which, I have found, is not conducive to sewing quilts in a windowless room shared with a smelly tortoise... Endurance didn't cover it! There must be an easier way too to get a quilt through a machine like mine... Though I am surprised how well it coped. There is nothing worse than stuffing a half made quilt through a machine when most of it starts on your lap, you are pricked to death by pins and the weather is 30o outside!

Since I last wrote I have recieved the walking foot for my sewing machine. And what a god send it has been. As readers of my blog will know that when I did my last quilt I broke a stack load of needles while using a regular foot and it was a complete nightmare. My life has now been transformed with this foot. I haven't puckered the fabric once and it worked like a dream... The link for the one I bought is below!

I then carefully pinned the re-ironed bias binding to the outside edge (while trimming the excess fabric along the way!)

That was then sewn... I don't know about anyone else but I love this part as you know you are on the home stretch... And it seems to go a lot quicker than the quilting bit... But it is not as hot either!

And then it was a quick trim or two and TA-dah! The quilt was finished. I am pleased that it is finally done as it was a long time in the conception and the actual practice but all a labour of love. I will be travelling down to my parents at the weekend to give it to them and can't wait to see their faces when they see it...

Ladies and gentlemen... The anniversary quilt!

Quilting against the clock.... Part III

After spending a lot of the previous evening appliqué - ing I had a finished panel... Only another 12 to go plus the extra filler, backing, wadding, edging etc!!

The next on the list was the peacock to symbolise my parents trip to India as my mum couldn't get over the fact that she had wild peacocks to look at every day!

The picture I found had a lovely big tail and didn't seem too difficult to cut into colour blocks.

I have been able to use scraps and off cuts of cotton for this one ... The blue is from the off cuts of the massive quilt that I made for my husband... The green is from the bow tie project at school and the silver is from the previous lemur leftovers!

The cutting out of the fabric was slightly more fiddly than the last one... There seemed to be more small part in this one than in the last one.

The crest of the peacock will be finished once I have appliquéd it... Something I plan to do tomorrow night... I can't wait as I am really enjoying this project so far!

Quilting against the clock... Part II

Update: My parents are not having their wedding anniversary 'do' until 26th July... This is a small mercy and I am grateful I have an extra week to work on the quilt.... It is still pushing it though!

The first square I wanted to tackle was the lemur one as I had found a picture that I wanted to follow.

The picture I found had lots of block colour which I could easily spilt for ease of appliqué...

Each of the designs was drawn onto the fabric and then bondaweb was ironed on the back. This was a particularly good move as the shiny silver fabric was very slippery and frayed easily so the bondaweb kept it together.

Before ironing on the main body of the lemur I back stitched the design of where the legs and paws of the lemur are...

I then cut out the main face and ironed them on the cream square.

Bit by bit I pieced together the black and white tail. This was a long and fiddly process and took a lot of concentration.

This is it so far... I need to appliqué it now...more updates soon...

Quilting the memories... Part I

After completing my first t shirt quilt my husband produced a box of t shirts of his own which we had carted from house to house for the last five years. They were all of his t shirts from his various university clubs and also a few football shirts he couldn't bear to throw away. He also wanted them to be made into a quilt. So this time I had to do it properly!

Because a lot of the t shirts had quite big logos on them I needed to find a size of square which would be universal.

I then pressed all the t shirts.

Some of the shirts had emblems on the front as well as the back so, using a quilting template, I traced it around the front design and then painstakingly appliquéd the design to the main panel. The photos below show the process used for the logos ...



This is a work in progress and I'm trying to chip away at it little by little... I will update again soon!

A quilt down memory lane...

I am amazingly sentimental person. This, unfortunately, has many, many draw backs. The main of these is the fact that I do have a tendency to hoard anything that has anything and everything as I cannot bear to throw anything away. Over the years I have got better as my husband is the complete opposite and with the arrival of our little girl it has made room a little restricted.

The biggest thing I found difficult throwing away was a box of old t shirts. I haven't worn t shirt properly since I was about 11 it over many, many years I seemed to have accumulated loads of them from productions I've worked on and west end shows I had been to see plus my London marathon shirt (a feat I still can't quite believe I completed) and a few other random ones from my university years. It seemed a pity to throw so many memories away so I came up with the idea of making a quilt out of them.

I had never made a quilt before so I tried to base it on first principles. I cut out the bits of the t shirt I wanted and then lay it on my living room floor ... It took up most of it. I pinned together the pieces roughly and then measured how much material I would need for the backing... And I needed quite a bit!

Something I love it to is go around charity shops. As part of my day job I usually have to have a good root around for props and stuff for productions so charity shops are one of my favourite places - and you are giving something back which is always nice to do too.

I found a beige flat sheet in a charity shop and thought it would make a good back panel for my quilt. I also bought a couple of metres of bias binding to neaten the edges at the end. (As you have probably gathered from my previous posts I have discovered that bias binding helps with so much ... Give it a go!)

After pinning the pieces together I sewed together a row followed by another row until I had roughly five rows of t shirt pieces. The biggest challenge though was that I hadn't kept the pieces uniform which made keeping the rows together quite difficult! If I attempted this again I would keep the pieces uniform in size and length!

When I had the rows I started sewing the rows together until I had the whole thing.

What I hadn't planned for was the fact that t shirt material is quite stretchy so left a few gaps in the finished panel so I found some off cuts of some fabric I liked and filled the gaps with it.

I then pinned the back panel to the front panel and then pinned bias binding around the edge. I then sewed two lines of stitching around the edge to bind the panels together.
Simple as that!
This was an ambitious project. I think next time I will do something a little more simple!