Two very good friends of mine are due a little baby in November and back in September I hatched a plan to sew them a quilt. Rather than a cutesy pastel-type baby quilt, I decided to base the palette upon their favourite colours of green and purple.
As it was my first quilting project I chose to use pre-cut Moda solid colour charm packs which I purchased from Ray Stitch in Islington alongside a metre and a half of lovely 100% organic and Fairtrade cotton for extra patches and the backing fabric. I also got just over a metre of organic cotton quilting batting too (£7.50).
I selected two sizes the
Moda Solid Colour charm pack 5" and the 2.5" (£10 and £3.50). I used two and a half packs of the 5" and three packs of the 2.5" patches for my final design.
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| Selecting the colour palette. The charm-pack comes with the full rainbow spectrum so I omitted the reds, oranges and whites |
Here are the many variants of design process I went through and I will show you the final result at the end.
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| First variation with a colour blend from Purple to green. I didn't think it had balance |
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| This next version appears to be a random selection with greens, purples and all shades in-between placed with dark, mid and lighter shades distributed more evenly |
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| Without the little patches I felt it looked a bit too plain! |
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| Patchwork stacks. After establishing my chosen order I stacked them ready to sew together. I labelled them so I wouldn't forget the placement of the patches. You may notice the little patches have a log-cabin-esque border. I forgot about the seam allowances so when the four patches were sewn together they were too small to tesselate with the 5" patches. I had to buy a third 5" charm pack so I could create the borders for these little patches. I actually think made the quilt look better! |
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| Final order safety pinned ready for quilting. |
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| Quilted with vertical lines running alongside the patches and a line in the centre (that runs through the middle of the little patches too). Green bias-binding has been pinned ready for sewing - think I am going to hand stitch it in place? |
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| Close up of the patches and my slightly wonky quilting! |
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| The final quilt. I am hand-sewing the binding. It may take some time! |
What have you been sewing recently?
Have you started any Christmas gifts?
Or some super selfish sewing?
Well done you have worked hard on this. I hope the baby loves rolling around and playing with the quilt. Love the colour combinations. What do the safety pins do?
ReplyDeleteThanks Louise.
DeleteThe safety pins just hold the patchwork, quilting batting and the back fabric together whilst you quilt it on the sewing machine. You could hand-baste instead of using safety pins but I took the quicker (cheats) option!
Looks great Caroline! I'm sure your friends will love it! I recently read a book where the heroine was an expert quilter, set in the 1850s so all the sewing was done by hand, hard to imagine how long that would take!
ReplyDeleteWow. I can't imagine how long it would have taken me if I hand quilted! Sounds like a good read x
DeleteWell done, so good when finished and you can admire what you have done.
ReplyDeleteThanks Carolee x
DeleteWow! It's beautiful! I love the colour combinations, and you're right about the little squares adding more interest. Your stitching on the edge is so beautifully neat too! x
ReplyDeleteThank you Clare. I had a lot of fun making it and very sore fingers after hand-stitching all the edging!
DeleteIt's just beautiful, I love the design you settled on, the little blocks look great. Did you bind that all by hand? It's so neat and even #neatstitchingenvy! Thanks so much for sharing at #HandmadeMonday
ReplyDeleteThank you so much Julie. I really enjoy hand-stitching - it is such a portable hobby!!
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