The Red Wren

I spent some of this afternoon sitting in a sunny spot in the lounge room finishing the last of this quilt;

I really enjoyed working on this and it will be sad (in a good way) to see it head off to it’s new owner – a sweet little 18 month old by the name of Georgia.

I was thinking about an article I read over at Make and Meaning (my new favourite blog), while working on this about process versus product. Normally I’m more of a product girl – I want a dress therefore I whip it up, then enjoy wearing it – but with the quilt I found I really enjoyed the process. It was quite relaxing once I got past the lining everything up (and unpicking) stage.

I look forward to working on another but for myself this time!

PS- I can’t seem to fix the RSS link up in the top corner- it seems to just spit out the feed rather than allow you to subscribe, so instead I’ve added a Subscribe button in the side bar – just pick your reader and follow along.

A while ago I started a quilt that ‘had’ to be finished by mid-September. I missed that dead line by a long shot! Anyhoo, today I picked it back up again and made a lot of progress! All that’s left is the hand quilting.

I designed the top myself and had originally planned to bind it, but then I saw this tutorial for a quilt in a day and thought that method would be easier and just as nice. I didn’t topstitch mine round the edges and are quilting it differently though.

Pinned and ready for quilting and looking a bit rumpled!

Along the way I learned some some things:

some patches match!

others do not.

Mitered corners are easy – although  I need to work on matching the pattern.

Hand quilting is going to take a long time!

Overall I’m happy with how it’s turning out. I almost didn’t quilt it and was tempted to leave it more like a comforter, but I think it needs the quilting to finish it off.

Project: Forest Friends Quilt
Started: 1st September 2009
Expected completion: MUST be complete by 12th September!

Descprition:

My second attempt at a quilt for a friend’s girls first Birthday. I’ve invested in a rotary cutter and some ‘quilters edge’  to hopefully make things easier for myself this time

Finished!

Complete 18th July 2009

This was an interesting learning process. I didn’t use a pattern (possibly not a sensible idea for ones first quilt), but I did consult various ‘net resources as well as the best quilter I know, Esther.

Things I’ve learnt for the next quilt:

• cut and sew the pieces carefully so they match properly
• sew straight lines when quilting, not around each piece
• if you must do lazy binding, measure first!

Overall I am very happy with it though. It’s a quilt to throw on the floor,  so it doens’t need to be perfect!

The teddy is there to show scale.

Child’s Quilt – In progress

I’m up to the quilting part of the quilt. I was undecided as to whether I would hand or machine quilt, but after trying my hand (pardon the pun) at hand quilting this evening I suspect I’m too short on time to hand quilt this one.

I began machine quilting but ran into several problems; the thread was doing strange things, the feed dogs gripped too much.. the usual issues I suspect one encounters when embarking on machine quilting without prior knowledge.

Tomorrow I’ll be unpicking today’s effort and starting again with one major advantage; I found a manual for my machine online (the hard copy manual is somewhere at mum and dad’s and I haven’t seen it since we got the machine 12 years ago) and low and behold it’s actually got quilting functionality that I didn’t know about because I’ve never had the need to know- like the ability to lower the feed dogs.

Let’s see what the rest of the week brings!