2010 Closure Quilt - Patched Work

The 2011 Closure Quilt is coming to a close!

I tried it out on Amelia's bed straight after I'd basted it. It looked good and felt good, she said, even with the safety pins still in it.

I decided to machine quilt it in the ditch following the squares, which was a little bit trickier than usual because I pressed the seams open on the back - so eliminating an actual ditch to stitch in.

I wanted to add an extra rustic, hand made-ish touch by doing some hand quilting also. I have a huge African basket full of multi coloured Perle 8 threads, and I'm picking them out at random and quilting cross hatch across all the squares.

It doesn't stand out as much as I thought it would, but I'm quite happy with it.

The problems are:

1. There are four layers to quilt through because I pieced the crazy log cabins over foundation fabric squares and,

2. When I basted the quilt I noticed that some of the fabrics' edges hadn't been caught in the seam with the sew and flip method, so I have to mend as I sew ;(

I'm calling the quilt Patched Work

I'll show you more when I finish,

Ann ♥

P.S. Clearly Dolly has made it her own already, while it was still under the sewing machine!

Finished the 2010 Quilt Top

I have finished the 2010 (do you say two-thousand and ten or twenty ten?) quilt top! It is 13, 4 3/4 inch blocks x 13, 4 3/4 inch blocks, so 169 little liberated log cabins. I kept being able to scrape together just enough fabric scraps from the shop to make row by row.
You can see the back here:
Each block was pieced on a foundation of calico, muslin or left over quilt backing. I pressed the seam allowances open in the hope that it will make quilting it easier. I didn't find that the seams matched up quite so accurately as when I push and press the seams to the sides.

These were finally the only scraps left.
Definitely not enough to make two more rows of 14 blocks each!
So I stopped here.

Dusty found the leftovers a nice comforting spot to nestle during all our wet weather!

I took the quilt top into the shop to choose a really nice fabric for the back...but I didn't end up using one of these two Prints Charming ones. I 'm using a greenish Art Gallery fabric instead. And I'm up to my least favourite step in the process - basting. So it's all sitting over the back of a chair at home waiting.

The scraps left in the bin after piecing the original scraps into log cabin blocks:

I was almost considering using them in another quilt...
I know some of you might have done that!
Now I've got some new scraps from the ends of strips I cut to make my I Spy Packs and I plan to make something out of them too.
I'm very thankful that we've been spared the devastation of the floods, and my thoughts go out to all of you who have been affected,
♥ Ann

Quiltopia!Design 2010 Closure Quilt

Here are the first blocks of my Quiltopia!Design 2010 Closure Quilt, stacked up like fabric pancakes! Each finished block measures 4 3/4 inches.

I made them out of this:

This is the mass of tangled fabric strips I cut off from the beginnings of bolts in my shop. Every fabric bolt that started with a ragged or uneven edge had a strip taken off to even it up, and the strips were collected over the cupboard door handle. There was quite a pile by the end of 2010!

This is the sewing machine I stitched the blocks on:

This is also the sewing machine I learnt to sew on in 1970's. It was second hand then and belonged to Mum. She recently downsized and I kept her sewing machine, not used now for many years. I had it serviced and it sews like a dream. This particular Singer model was apparently Australian made. It was/is a lot of fun to sew on!
You can see the blocks taking shape. I decided on a liberated Log Cabin style I constructed them in a liberated manner on a calico/muslin foundation so each block could later be cut down to a uniform size. After making quite a few blocks, I wished I'd chosen a larger size!
I tried out some different layouts and I decided on the very traditional Straight Furrows design - it seemed to show up the subtle lights and shadows best. Sometimes it was quite difficult to find enough darker fabrics.
I began to notice that the blocks tended to use certain colours in their light half and I organised them so the colours flowed diagonally up the quilt in stripes of yellow, pink, blue and mauve.

Then I stacked them into piles of their rows and took them home to continue over my Christmas break. It has been a fun exercise.The challenge I set myself was to:

use only fabrics I'd had in my shop
make small improvised blocks
finish by the end of the year 2010

I succeeded in the first two, but the third? I'm still going...although I have finished the quilt top!

I will post some more photos of the quilt's progress next time. In the meantime, you can follow its progress on Quiltopia!Design Facebook page if you'd like.

xo xo Ann.