I’m usually pretty resolute that two children is just right, but I admit that this quilt caused me to waver! But my lovely sister has given us a nephew so off to Australia it goes. I must say, she has got some of my best stuff – aren’t I kind?
A few things converged and inspired me to make this quilt:
- Devon’s lovely Wonky Log Cabin Quilt and tutorial
on Miss Make
- Fabric gifts from my MIL this Christmas
- Making my first quilt block
- A visit from my parents who could transport finished
object back to Australia
I went through my stash and pulled out everything that is quilting
cotton. It had to be a unisex design, so I discounted anything pink and/or girly
immediately.
These fabrics are quite sentimental to me, all in different
ways. There are a lot of them and they all have a story for me.
Quilt Top
The centre squares: animal pictures. These are
perfect for a nursery. I had saved an Ikea pillowcase, which came with a duvet
cover. I liked the cute animal print and knew it would come in useful one day.
I never used it because my girls didn’t use pillows in their cots.
Reds: red spot (very special, my first fabric
purchase and E’s favourite dress, also used multiple times afterwards), red apples (child’s dress), plain red (so useful!)
Blues: navy pin dot, 3 blue shirt scraps (all my
quilts will have some shirt or other in them, due to my lifetime supply of salvaged
shirts)
Oranges: owls (too cute!), orange on orange (I’m
learning so fast how important it is to have plains in a quilt)
Greens: lime squiggles (really bright and fun), green flowers (the biggest outlier here so tried not to use it
too much), eau de nil plain (gorgeous quality – I’m supposed to be making
napkins, but I could spare a few centimeters)
Brown: almost didn’t make the “cut”, but I’m
glad it’s there, it adds depth and texture.
I had SO MUCH FUN doing a lucky dip with the fabric
selection! I had my centre squares (which were not square) laid out, and my fabric
strips in a massive pile. I closed my eyes and rummaged for every single piece.
Then I had to attach it to the next square. I gave myself one veto for each
turn, in case the match was awful. I also made another concession and allowed
myself to use up any shorter strips early on, while the blocks were small. I
didn’t want to be left with a lot of short sections which wouldn’t fit later on.
I just loved watching the blocks forming before my eyes and watching them change as they got larger. I do confess to having a couple of favourites: the little hedgehog with the blues and browns, and the monkey with the orange and navy (picture below).
Devon’s tutorial is really easy to follow, and she is an
excellent writer, who makes it a lot of fun. I did waste a bit of fabric though. The quantities required were
massive, and I would cut down in future. I cut slightly less than
specified, mainly because I had a lot of scraps, or Fat Quarters, not full
width fabrics as specified. I still had lots left over.
I pieced the leftovers into stripes for the quilt
back and used them up that way. I like how it ties the two together, but it is not flat: those long, straight seams let me down.
I am delighted with how the top and the back turned out. I am really happy with my fabric choices, it is a
fun quilt to look at, it was fun to make.
I cut out on day 1, pieced most of the top
on day 2 and finished up on day 3. Backing took about the same amount of time.
Batting
I ordered the batting via eBay and chose 80% cotton, 20% polyester. When it arrived, I was disappointed by how thin it was. 100% polyester batting has much more loft, but as a beginner, I wanted to work with cotton. As it is going to be used in Australia, the warmth is not so important, and it is pretty heavy. But it is worth noting that this is not soft enough to use as a playmat on a hard floor.
Basting
I was quite unaware of the need to baste a quilt, until I looked up tutorials on all kinds of basting, including specialty-tools-to-buy-to-close-the-curved-safety-pins. My goodness! I'm not in that league. I decided to hand stitch a long, straight stitch as basting. I started in the centre, did one along the width (to 9 o'clock then to 3 o'clock), then a lengthways one (to 12 o'clock to to 6 o'clock), then radiating out lengthways from there. Each row of thread was pretty fast, but there were quite a lot, so it did take a while. I'm sure they weren't all perfectly formed stitches, but the did the job and held the 3 layers together for the quilting.
Quilting
I was very undecided about how to quilt this. I loved the top so much, that I didn't want to "spoil" it with stitches. In the end, I went with wide spaced wavy lines, believing they would be very forgiving of any mistakes. It was the right choice: the wavy lines don't compete with the geometric shapes of the log cabin squares and my stitching was off - mainly due to the weight of the quilt dragging on the machine, which made the stitch length shorter in places, and the waves turn oddly. I deliberately avoided keeping them uniform. Some are long and sweeping, some wiggly, some both, and I didn't measure the distance between them. I picked a low stress quilt top and I wanted a low stress quilting method for my first effort!
Binding
My first thought for binding fabric was the lime green squiggles that I used for the back. But I wasn't sure if I had enough left, and big sis also wanted a skirt out of the scraps. So I considered plain navy too. I really like how the dark binding on Devon's quilt gives a strong border, and really sets off the colours. But the green is bright and fun, so I went with that. I used this tutorial from iCandy Handmade. When I sewed the binding to the back, it came out very wavy. For the second half of the binding, I pulled the binding tight agains the edges of the batting and it was much better. That means there is only 1/4 inch showing from the front, and closer to 3/4 at the back. In future, I would sew the binding on just under 1/2 inch from the edge of the quilt so that the front and back binding widths were the same, with no wavy edges. You can see the difference in the picture above. That's one of my favourite blocks, the orange and navy monkey block.
Washing
Nothing to report here. The batting and the thread didn't shrink as much as I expected, maybe because my quilting stitches were not that close together. I had washed all of the fabrics that went into the top and the back, so I didn't expect any changes there.
I'm trying to work out how long this quilt took. It was a great way to get my sewing mojo back after Christmas. I started it mid- January and finished mid-Feb. I didn't work on any other sewing projects at the same time. The piecing was fast but there were a lot of different elements to contend with after that, and the hand stitching for the binding took some time.
I must say, I loved this project! From start to finish, it was fun and interesting. I loved working with colourful fabrics, and not having to worry about fit or fastenings. I don't think I have been converted to quilt making, but a quilt here and there is a good thing.
I had to wait for the baby before I could post this...
One of my favourite parts is the covered market. It is row after confusing row of all sorts of stalls selling everything: butchers, greengrocers, cafes, cards, ribbons, toys, clothing, gifts, luggage and, of course, yarn. I had to get something while I was there, and what better souvenir for a knitter than a skein of yarn? I loved the colours of King Cole Riot, so while it is not an artisan yarn, nor a fibre composition of particular merit, I was taken with it and bought it in the colourway Rhapsody. I liked the blues and pinks, although it has come up with red as the dominant colour. The colour changes move evenly and then reverse through the skein so that each stripe is flanked by the same colour. Eg: violet, teal (start), violet, grey, red, pink, lavender (middle of change), pink red, grey, violet. And so on.
