Just not purple

I can't believe we are already in the Christmas holidays.  We have been home now for 3 weeks and I am only just now getting back up to date.  Getting used to the weather here has been a joke, we were having temperatures of 30C and upwards and it was only 2C when we arrived home.  Now though, the weather is just doing nothing.  Nothing, because it is not really cold but also not really warm, very little sunshine and not much else, just DULL dark overcast gloomy days.  Still, we have seriously cold weather in Canada to look forward to and I expect I will be glad of the English weather when we get back (LOL)

Just not purple


I have been collecting fat quarters in black with cream, silver, grey and tan prints for the last year and decided to make a quilt from the book "Spotlight on Neutrals" by Pat Wys for a friend who loves purple, but when I asked her which shade of purple was her favourite, she replied "Love purple, all shades of it, but everyone is buying me everything in purple and I'm  starting to feel a bit purpled out".
I thought the colours would fit in, being quite neutral, with all her other purple furnishings.  I only had 2 weeks to finish the quilt as I wanted to give it to her for Christmas so all other projects were put on hold whilst I cut out and pieced together the quilt top.

 I wasn't too sure which colour thread to use, there are 3 distinct blocks in the quilt, some very dark squares (mainly black), the mainly light stars and the smaller chequerboard block with equal amounts of light and black.  The back of the quilt is tan and after trying silver, grey, black, cream and tan threads on small areas (which I then had to unpick) I decided to do all the quilting in tan.  My top thread is Glide Mocha and I used Cream Magnaglide in the bobbin with a size 14 needle.

I have just worked through Jamie Wallen's "Mystical Grids" tutorial so decided to use one of his designs for inspiration to quilt the larger dark squares, it was then easy to decide how to quilt the smaller chequerboard blocks.

Large on point nine patch blocks

Small chequerboard squares

The challenge was the cream star blocks.  I wanted feathers but did not want too romantic or too formal looking feathers, so feather fronds were chosen with a little swirly curl at the top end.  I didn't want all those feathers to join together in the centre of the star though (too dense quilting) so I quilted a square in the centre of each star with the same design as in the large dark square blocks.

Light coloured star blocks design

Only the outline edge of all the blocks were quilted with SID (stitch in the ditch).  The outline of the little squares in the centre of the stars and the SID were done using rulers, everything else was quilted free motion, which is my favourite quilting style.

Back of quilt before binding stitched on

Quilting completed, just binding to stitch in place

Detail of quilting on the back

Quilting detail on back - not true colour, but adjusted to show up quilting

I loved quilting this quilt, it was very hard to give this quilt away but then, if we don't love the presents we give, are they worth giving?


Dutch treat update
I did not manage a great deal of sewing when in Indonesia so it is just as well that I was so ahead of myself in October.  I will cheat and add the ones I did in November to the ones in December  and pretend that it was all one month. Not that I am kidding anyone ...