BLOG 386

BLOG 386

Don’t you just love snow!! We have had a fair bit it and have been snowed in for the last few days. It is not particularly the amount of snow that has been the problem rather the high winds and drifting. We live at the end of a long country lane with high hedges and it has been systematically filled in with wonderful snow sculptures and unpassable snow mounds. For me it is a heaven sent opportunity to catch up on some concentrated sewing time. I know I can’t go anywhere and no-one can get to me so I can just indulge myself with fabric and thread. And I have done that by the bucket load!

 

I have completed my decorative panels for the group quilt. I can’t show this as the project remains a secret until the Festival of Quilts.

I have completed all the sewing on my second Contemporary Welsh Quilt. The pieces need lots of decorative soldering now but my studio door (part of the garage) was frozen and blocked so I couldn’t open it for a few days. I am very pleased with this project so far.

               CW 1

 

            CW2

 

              CW3

 

            CW4

 

                 CW5

 

                 CW6

 

              CW7

 

            CW8 Storage

 

LINUS QUILT 3

 

As with last week’s project, this Linus quilt started with a striped fabric, one which I bought many years ago to make interesting bias-cut bindings. I was able to cut out 36 squares at 6” from what remained of the fabric, enough for a 6 across by 6 down quilt top.

                  

               Striped fabric

 

At first I thought of a traditional Rail Fence layout and laid the squares down on the carpet to form the pattern. I found that the blocks with yellow in started to stand out and so I contrived to use them to emphasise lines going across the quilt.

              Rail Fence

 

 

 …. And then I thought,’ here lies a lot of work!’ as I would have to make sure they were sewn in very precise lines in a very precise order! These Linus quilts are meant to be quick and cheerful so I promptly abandoned that approach and placed all the squares in a pile by the sewing machine. I introduced another fabric to separate the squares and cut 2” strips from this.

              Border fabric

 

 

I started to sew the squares onto the strips, alternating them to lie vertically or horizontally.

             Alternating strips

 

Once separated, I joined them together in pairs and the pairs into lines of 6, making sure 3 lines started with vertical strips and 3 started with horizontal strips.

             Pairs

 

               Joining strip

 

            Checking lines

 

                Joining lines

 

                Pressing seams

 

And after an afternoon’s sewing, another quilt top was completed or as I like to say ‘Job done!’

            Finished top