Grandmother's Flower Garden

I completed this quilt over the weekend, and I'm pleased with how it turned out. I started this quilt as a secondary project, thinking I could just piece a few hexagons every so often. Needless to say, the task was much longer term than I anticipated. First, making all those hexagons - cutting out the paper templates, tacking on the fabric. Piecing the 'flowers' by hand was quite pleasant, but then I still had a mountain of pathway hexagons to make. Then came the enormous job of joining all the flowers and pathway pieces. I did that part in rows, making the quilt in two halves and then joining the halves together, as the two sections were by now quite unweildy. It was a relief when I could start taking out the paper templates. I trimmed the edges and attached the border by machine, then began hand quilting around each flower. The border took longer than anticipated too, but I was determined to finish the quilt over the Christmas break. Sitting under a quilting frame in Auckland's heat and humidity was no picnic, but I pressed on (listening to Rebecca, read by Anna Massey on my iPod). Then trimming the borders, making the binding and stitching it on and it was done. Phew!

Quilt Day 2008

I usually get all my quilts out of their blanket box in the summer to have a look at them. All the others are in storage so these are the ones I've completed most recently. Hopefully I'll have one more to add in a couple of weeks' time when the Grandmother's Flower Garden is complete. Meantime, I'm trying to work out how to best use my vintage sheets as backing fabrics for the three completed quilt tops in my pile.

Rag doll

I made this doll today (first day of Christmas holidays - yay!) using patterns adapted from various sources. I think she needs some more outfits though so I'll work on those. I might try hand-stitching the next doll as I could not manage smooth, rounded seams on the ends of the arms and legs with my ancient old Singer sewing machine.

Fruit Salad

I just finished piecing this quilt made up of random length pieces made into strips. The fabrics are a mix of new, recycled and vintage prints. I probably won't add a border and the quilting will be either simple straight lines, randomly placed, or Baptist Fans, which I love doing. The backing will be two retro print sheets I picked up in a junk store for NZ$4 each.

I now have three quilt tops waiting to be made into quilts. I thought that using up some of my stash would reduce the volume of fabric wedged into my bottom drawer, but it's hardly made a dent and I still have a number of shirts waiting to be cut up and prepared ready for use.

Op Shop Cotton Leaf

Just finished piecing this quilt. The design is borrowed from a book of African quilts, the pattern is Cotton Leaf, which is a Bear Paw variation.

The three khaki prints were all shirts bought at a local op shop in one shopping trip. The white fabric is one of Peter's old Brooks Bros non-iron shirts, as is the French blue. The pale blue fabric is another op shop find; it's a soft linen, and horrible to work with as it moves around a lot. The binding will be made from diagonally cut strips of the middle khaki stripe fabric.

Quilt therapy

Here I have laid out all the blocks for a future quilt. The design is inspired by the banner and promotional material for restaurant Bellota in Auckland, New Zealand. In December last year I'd seen an advertisement for the restaurant in a local magazine and thought, wow, that would make a really good quilt design. As I thought about it, I realised I had all those colours of plain fabric in my stash and set about planning the quilt. Each block is 10 inches by 5 inches (finished) so with 14 blocks across and 7 down this will produce a quilt which is 70 inches square. For the quilting design I'm thinking randomly-placed concentric circles, to offset the severity of the oblong blocks. Last weekend at the op shop I bought a vintage bedsheet in greens and yellows which might just fit for the backing.