Friday 29 May 2015

The 1826 Quilt



I’m ashamed to say that I finished this quilt top (one of my first) for my son’s 18th birthday in 2008! The hand dyed fabrics, used for the red, orange and yellow stars were scraps from another quilt that I purchased at the Melbourne Quilt Festival.  The Japanese print for the blue stars, and the dark blue homespun came from my local quilt shop in Canberra. The pattern (which I now can’t find) is from an Australian Quilt and Patchwork magazine.



I decided to make the outer stars red, the inner orange, and the centre ones yellow.  At the time I felt like it looked like he could fall through the stars on a dark night. But it also looks like the yellow stars are jumping out from the centre and fading into orange and red.



After finishing the top I was terrified of free motion quilting it and just put it away until I felt confident.  That hasn’t happened. Anyhoo – on a recent visit my son asked me what became of his quilt and I decided to finish it for his 26th birthday – hence the name ‘1826’.



I quilted in the ditch with a dark blue thread, and orange in the bobbin. I wish now that I had used a clear thread instead.  But I’m reasonably happy with the result. The back is an orange batik that I found in my LQS especially to finish the job. I quite like how the back looks too.


 
The batting is a rather expensive one that I can’t remember the name of. What I didn’t like was the amount of fibre that came off while I was quilting.  I sneezed my way through quilting it I can tell you. So I washed the quilt afterwards in a short cold wash, firstly to make sure that the hand dyed fabrics didn’t run and to make sure that it would withstand being chucked into the machine by my son, and secondly to get rid of all the batting fibre clinging to the top. As you can see, I still need to take a clothes lint remover to it.



The binding is from a piece of fabric that I have purchased to finish another UFO from 2008. And these are the best mitred corners on a binding that I have ever done! I always hand sew the binding to the back as I love the invisible finish and I get a great deal of pleasure from adding a hand sewn element to the quilt at the end.



My son has now asked me to sew a hanging sleeve on it so that he can put it on the wall behind his bed. Hmmmm wish I’d thought of that sooner too.

The second 2008 UFO is in the sewing machine now. Here is a sneak peak of one of the blocks. This has to be stitched in the ditch because of the folded corners at each end of the logs. Wrestling this monster through my domestic sewing machine is proving tiresome to say the least. And I can already see that I will have to go back when the ditch stitching is finished and figure out what to do on some of the larger logs.  Sheesh!  No wonder it is a UFO.



BUT I am determined to finish all my UFOs before I dare start another quilt. And I’m really looking forward to that as I love the pattern from a modern quilt book, and I love the fabric I purchased at a quilt show last year. Oh! And Happy Birthday Sam!

1 comment:

  1. 1826, perfect title. It appears to have been worth the wait. It's beautiful, congrats on the finish.

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