I have promised a friend that I will make him a quilt to help raise funds for his charity "Hope Asia"
Information about this charity can be seen at :
http://www.hopeasia.org
When I offered to make this quilt, I had no idea what I was going to make, but having spent a considerable amount of time pondering how to maximise the appeal to as wide an 'audience' as possible, I decided on a traditional pattern, made with more modern, almost masculine fabric in a size that would fit on either a double bed or single bed.
I have the perfect fabric for this already, called Rhapsodie Coloree designed by Ricky Tims and decided to use it with a 'Stonehenge' cream background to soften it a little. I have no idea what I am going to use for the backing fabric, as I have just enough of the Stonehenge cream fabric for the quilt top. I bought the Stonehenge fabric in the States so am not sure if I will be able to get the same fabric in the UK. I will do a search and see what comes up.
I am using a pattern designed by Annie Unrein called "Criss cross" and have used her method of making half square triangles. Provided you can stitch straight on marked lines and can cut accurately, this is a really quick (!) way of making 8 half square triangles.
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| Foundation piecing pattern sheet |
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| What it looks like on the back |
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| Cutting after sewing |
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| Half square triangles opened up and paper removed |
Sixteen hours later and I have completed all my half square triangles and assembled my blocks and laid some of them out on my design wall. Just as well I have the design wall.....error on the bottom row!
Looking at the quilt laid out on the design wall, I also decided to make the quilt a bit bigger, so that it will be a 'proper' double quilt, it can still be used on a single bed, it will just overhang the sides more.
My design wall is not big enough to take all the blocks, so I just lay out the ones that I can fit on, take a photo when I am happy and then lay them out on the floor so that I can repeat the process with the remaining blocks. I will then take more photos and look at all the photos side by side until I am happy with the layout, before starting to stitch the blocks together.
Borders finished and quilt top finally finished, ironed flat and ready to be marked for quilting. This has so far taken 25 hours. Ever wondered what the quilt top looks like from the back before it is quilted?
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| Photo taken of back of quilt top |
Undecided how to quilt at the moment, still not sure what fabric to use as backing, might pop into my local quilt shop with the quilt top and see what I can find.
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| Quilt top ready to be quilted |
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In the meantime a quilting friend, Lorna, is making a quilt for herself out of blocks that all her quilting friends have made for her from a piece of fabric that she has sent to them all. The idea is that you make the block, to your own design, pattern, etc, and that the block will remind her of you. She has also asked me (and very honoured I am) and I have had lots of fun thinking about ideas. We met on the trip to Japan and I was her "shopping buddy" and we had particular fun in a YEN 1000 shop (equivalent of a dollar store in US, but bit more expensive) and shopping for kimonos, bags and fabrics. We even skipped lunch one day so that we can fit a bit of extra shopping in..... so my block really had to be about our joint love of shopping. I decided to make the block like a shopwindow with display of a kimono and handbags and rolls of fabric and frame it in crazy patchwork as there is no other form of patchwork that says "FUN" so much as crazy style, so this is my block..... hope you like it Lorna!
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| Lorna's block |
Just saying ..... this block is only 6" square .....
If I could make a bigger block, I would have been able to add scarves, patterns, trinkets and all sorts of other things too! (LOL)
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