The cotton threads have been vacuumed up, the second machine put away and my sewing room is showing very little evidence that me and my girl were ever constructing a quilt in there. But we did, and it’s finished …
You’ll know from my last post that quilting isn’t really my thing, but we muddled through and created a really meaningful, personal and beautiful quilt (if I say so myself!). Once we’d sewn the strips (see last post) together and made one complete sheet, my girl was sent off to pack while I put it all together.
Choosing a backing fabric took a lot of thought as I wanted to use something I already had in my stash. Luckily this lovely stripe from Tinsmiths screamed “quilt me” and any thoughts of the summer skirt it was intended for, vanished into thin air. To make it the right size, I added width and length with a patchwork border of fabrics we’d used in the main quilt.
Once I’d got the batting sandwiched between the top and bottom layers, I trimmed the edges square and started to tack them together. I’m sure there is a ‘proper’ way to do this but I basically sat in the middle and smoothed all the ripples to the outside edges until it was as flat as a pancake, then I rolled the ends tightly (thank you for that top tip Mum), towards the centre and tacked from the middle out until it was secure.
With sore fingers, a bit of eye strain and only two days before departure, I whisked it back to the sewing machine and began to quilt.
My machine has never taken such a beating. I propped the quilt up on a chair and fed through the layers, row after row, clunkety, clunk! Finally when all the rows were complete, I made some bias binding from the off cuts and completed the make. Here it is finished and drying in the autumnal sunshine …
In the panic packing that preceded her departure, I completely forgot to take any photos of it dry, so thank you to My Girl for sending me some pics of it in situ …
It was a brilliant project to do and a pleasure to make it with my gorgeous girl. Apparently, it gets quite cold up north, so snuggle up poppet and thank you for the sewing fun times for sure, I love you! X