Saturday 27 June 2015

Sea Glass Quilt Ta-Da!

I've been busy this month, with little time (or I admit inclination) to blog. I'm not complaining, I've been having fun ! Firstly, a meet up with some quilting friends in London, with a trip to see the Alexander McQueen exhibition at the V and A. This alone should really merit a blog post of it's own, but I didn't take any photos and it seems a long time ago now. Needless to say, I had a great time and it was good to catch up with everyone ( you know who you are!!). This was followed by  a couple of wonderful days learning how to do graffiti quilting with Karlee Porter at The Cottonpatch in Birmingham. This was my final piece, far from perfect, but giving me the inspiration to try some more.




And I won my very own Karlee Porter mini in the raffle:

 
Then, I enjoyed a one day free machine embroidery class with Janet Clare, at Busy Bees in Newport.
 
These are obviously a work in progress, but this is definitely something I'm going to do more of.

 Mr Hare and I had a brief 5 day holiday in Ireland (we want to go back again) and then I attended a week long intensive Spanish for absolute beginners course at Cardiff University. I've also been doing a lot of gardening, just to keep up with the weeds which seem to be proliferating at a rate of knots!! Throw in a couple of birthday parties, and June has flown by!

Anyway, it is time to reveal my Sea Glass Quilt. Sadly, I forgot to add this to my FAL second quarter list, so it doesn't count.

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This quilt started life in March 2013, in the Simply Solids Bee and was quite frankly , a disaster. The block is the eye spy version of the disappearing nine patch block ( and I did a tutorial about how to make this block here). It was destined for my niece Eleri, but for a variety of reasons ( mostly none existent or badly made blocks) I didn't have enough blocks to make the quilt big enough, so I threw the blocks in a drawer and made Eleri this quilt:


I found the blocks in the drawer, whilst having a clear out, and realised I would have enough decent blocks to make a  quilt for a child. Now I've finished it, I can see that my original vision for this quilt was spot on. It has turned out just as I hoped and in fact it will be another quilt I will be sad to part with ( it is destined for Siblings Together).

And the back:
 
I quilted it in a simple graphic pattern, but again chose one I hadn't tried before, to increase my repertoire:


I used a left over strips from an extra wide quilt back for the binding:

 
I'm very pleased with the finished quilt and have made a mental note to make more quilts from solids.
 
 
Quilt Stats:
 
Size: 60 x 70 inches
 
Front made with disappearing nine patch blocks in a variety of Kona solids in blue and green , Kona white and Kona aqua
 
Back: extra wide Riley Blake blue with white dots
 
Binding: Left over strips of Moda extra wide in green with white dots
 
Wadding: Fabric Freedom 100% cotton from roll
 
Quilted with :So fine ( 60 w) white in bobbin, Presencia (60/3) white on top