Tuesday 13 November 2012

Freya's Quilt

I found the Fit For A Princess! picnic quilt tutorial on Sew Mama Sew and completely fell in love with the idea of a picnic quilt. One to throw out in the back garden for baby to crawl around on or a little girl to throw tea parties on... For some reason it took me another four or so months to cotton on to guest blogs and that the tutorial-teacher-person has their own website for me to go stalk, meaning I missed out on I'm A Ginger Monkey for far too long in my first year of quilty discovery!

Freya had arrived to two of our good friends around the same time as our niece was born. Therefore, I cunningly planned a 6 month 'birthday' present quilt.... (It may have been her 8 month birthday before I really finished.) I fell in love with Apple of My Eye by The Quilted Fish for Riley Blake. Totally in Love. Not too childish, not too girly, and really really happy. Perfect.

I ordered the fabric. Set to work laying it out, in the ridiculously baking heat of early summer in DC.

Yes, that's my naked foot - sorry. But look how YUMMY!

The quilt top came together beautifully. And looked delicious every step of the way, creating that lovely momentum where you can't wait to have the next little bit done 'cos you 'Just Have To See!'.

From loving how easily the little corner triangles went in....
To seeing the blocks come together even more beautifully than I imagined!
This quilt became my slight obsession. It wasn't enough to love how the rows looked, but I even loved the appearance of the ironed out seams!

Loved enough to take pictures!





However, once the quilt top was done I hit a total lull; we had lots of visitors, I finished up at my job, and then moved continent - leaving the quilt top to sit unloved for a little while... After a couple of months I basted it, only to leave it to one side for another month before quilting!

I gotta say though, even looking at these pictures again has me feeling happy - this quilt design and the fabrics really work for me together!

When I finally got around to the quilting stage, I broke out my favourite bright pink thread (it is a girl's quilt after all) and then did a criss-cross pattern, which ended up running through and framing different central diamonds beautifully! I found this slightly terrifying, as it relied on me managing to sew in fairly straight lines and not end up wrecking the quilt top I'd fallen in love with.

With the help of some ruled straight lines (in Clover pencil), I didn't feck up too badly anywhere (that I'll be pointing out)!
Look how nicely it worked out!!!!
To finish off, and because I'd been doing the Handstitched course with Rachel of Stitched In Color, I chose to go all out and embroider my own  label for the back.

Cleverly/Luckily the label was just the right size to place over a slight hiccup in quilting on the back. Yay!


Oh! the backing and binding! For the backing I used the end of the green Ikea flat sheet that I used on my first ever quilt - waste not, want not! And for the binding, I bought a jelly roll of Apple of My Eye and cut it up into ~5" strips (I didn't measure them) and then pieced them together randomly to form a multi-coloured binding.

Look at it, all washed and finished!
I fricking loved making this quilt. I'm sure there were curses at the time - but in retrospect I just remember it being utterly perfect! It was really hard to give away, but also brilliant to give away cos I'm just so proud of it. I hope Freya and her parents get lots of use out of it, especially for back-garden picnics!





2 comments:

  1. it's totally gorgeous and look at those lovely nested seams..well done bet Freya will love it,

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. thank you! i'm going to have to google nested seams now, though... hopped by your blog and am totally blown away by your embroidery!

      Delete

Thank you so much for commenting! I love hearing your honest thoughts and opinions on whatever I've been harping on about :)

I email replies as soon as I get the chance.