Flower Quilt Finished

At last!

I'm so pleased with it,
this is the first time I have used a small binding on the edge of a quilt, other than a mini quilt

the binding gives it a lovely neat edge

The original side

 I restitched the monogram and original date of completion

The new side with 4 painted panels and the rest of the squares taken from the original front border.

Initial and date.

Another project complete :)

Flower Quilt ...progress

In my last post I mentioned my Flower Quilt which I was working on about this time last year.

it was more of a remake / refashion. 

I wanted to make it a bit smaller and a bit more interesting on the reverse, I got as far as making a new reverse side complete with four new painted panels.

 pieced together with the squares I removed from the other side.

The new side.

 I took out the thick heavy blanket that was in there and replaced it with a thinner fleece throw from IKEA. Im thinking this will be just as warm but easier to wash size and weight wise.

A few hours spent over the weekend 

re-hand quilting the six painted panels on original side 

 the colours have faded a little

 but still as pretty

 I enjoyed the process of quilting it by hand again 

 onto the new cream throw

I worked with a large hoop to quilt and found it much easier and quicker, 

I bought the hoop a while ago and have never used it before now.

Today more progress......

Some of the original green backing fabric cut into strips for binding.

I'm not too in love with the colour,

  thought I'd use some blue or green fabric paint to brighten it up

I settled on the blue, covered the table with cling film and

 brushed the paint & water solution onto the strips. 

Strips all dried and colour fixed with a hot iron ...a nice match for the quilt 

they have a little bit of a sparkle to them which you cant see in the picture.

good match for the paler original side too.

The strips are 2.5 inches wide, for a double binding these are now folded in half 

ironed and ready for stitching on tomorrow.

Stitching, quilting, thinking

This picture is a bit blurry, I took it with my left hand,

 even after ironing each panel to fix the fabric crayon I'm getting blue fingers :)

there is something quite satisfying about hand quilting,

my stitch line is a long way from being perfect

 but that's what I like about it, and why I chose to do this, it's not something I had planned to do with this quilt re~make, it was more a subconscious decision that was made somewhere in the process...

the more I stitch the more stitching I want to do on it, leaving my mark in the fabric.

 I'm not going to rush it to get it finished

 but I will keep at it, when time allows, till it's complete. 

Looking forward to Kevin and my little girl coming home today, they left Southampton at 3am this morning to do the long drive home and should be arriving home any minute! :)

What a lovely sunny day it is here in Fife.

Day 4 ~ Flower Quilt ~ Hand quilting

Last night, saw me spend too much time removing threads from the original panel

 I cut a new backing from the pale green sheet which was the original back of the larger quilt, much more agreeable than brown!

Finally I began quilting the new work to the fleece throw.

Two of the four squares in the bottom corner

 and the blue flower panel now completed

I got to bed way too late last night and feeling a bit tired this morning :(

Today I'm hoping to get a lot more quilting done my aim is to have both sides ready to sandwich together by the time 'C' and daddy return on Saturday. 

Not sure if I'll manage it!

I'm missing them :( but by all accounts they are having a lovely time, spending time with family going to the beach at Mudeford and visiting Winchester Cathedral

Today they are off to spend the day further along the lovely Jurassic coast at Dorset
with a trip to Sea World

and visit to 'Durdle Door' which I know  'C' is looking forward to.
It features in one of her favourite films 'Nanny  McPhee'
 it's such a beautiful place I wish I was going with them today :(
This picture was taken in 2007 when we were there,  I have a lovely one of 'K' and I sitting on the beach but he doesn't like me posting pictures of him so this one will have to do.

Right better get on with my quilt!

All patched up

Not a straight line in sight!

I'm not one for measurements really

 no doubt all you quilters will be cringing at my method .... if it looks right it will do!

I want to get the positioning of the flowers just right ;)

 actually here's a picture of some tools just so you know I do use them occasionally

 all lined up and straight

I enjoyed the process of it all

 and look!

 some lovely hand dyed fabric strips for other projects ;)

All sewn now :)

I'm going to hand quilt this onto the fleece blanket before I add the other side to it.

talking of which it's looking a bit dull

I'm thinking perhaps this horrible brown backing behind the wadding isn't helping!

I don't know what possessed me to use it.....perhaps because I was given it and wouldn't use it for anything else!

Anyway it's in the bin now and I'm sitting here picking out hundreds of threads.

The stitching has come away on a couple of the seams so I'll repair them tomorrow.

 I knew there was a reason I wouldn't have time to do all that batik thing!



Layout

Playing around with the layout .....

from top left,  Pink, blue, orange, teal

blue, pink, orange, teal

teal, pink, orange, blue

teal, orange, pink, blue

Which one would you opt for ?

Day 3 ~ more to show

Duh! Moment
I cant believe I have gotten this far with the panels and pondered over the whole heat setting process only to read in the instructions for the watercolour dyes that you have to wash them out right away and that once dry they are indeed permanent . . .lol
(me! the person who is always telling folk off for not reading instructions!)

Oh never mind I'm still having fun!

after dinner last night I decided to continue with the painting and managed to get the backgrounds on all four of them done.

 You can see the running and overlapping layers and attempted cover ups mainly in the two blue themed flower pieces but I like them.

I think the peach and yellow/green backgrounds turned out pretty well.
there are some lines from where they have been hung over the airer overnight I didnt want to hang them out on the line last night as the forcast wasn't good I woke up to horrible rain this morning so made the right decision there!

The little flower sample and 3 others...just to use up the leftover paint,
 it's always nice to have hand dyed fabric on hand for little projects.
I decided not to use batik wax on them in the end, the process involves ironing forever to get the wax out and I didn't want to spend too much time doing this. I'm aiming to have this quilt finished or at least at the binding stage by Saturday.

All ironed (to fix the crayon) and ready to go ......

it's time to sew !