This little quilt normally lives on the coffee table and its function in life is to protect the table from drips and spills. It really earned its keep yesterday evening as two mugs of coffee were knocked over and of course they had to be big mugs still mostly full of hot coffee. Although the coffee soaked through the top, the wadding and the backing the table came to no harm. iI was convinced the quilt would be permanently stained though. I mean we all know that if we want to deliberately make a piece of fabric look aged one of the easiest ways to do it is to soak the fabric in coffee. The quilt went straight into the washing machine and was put through a rinse cycle with no added detergent or fabric conditioner. It came out without a mark on it. No hint of coffee on the front or on the back. Now it just needs to finish drying and it will be ready to resume its role as table protector supreme.
Aileen sent me this block for the December swap. for lots of reasons we were both late in sending each other our blocks but I consider this well worth waiting for, all the triangles are made up of strips sewn together and sub-cut which gives a lovely effect. The applique flowers are so cute and the button centres are just the perfect finishing touch. A lovely,lovely block.
The sofa has a new quilt. It's lovely to cuddle under and wonderfully warm. It's not supposed to be an heirloom quilt it is a to be used everyday and loved to bits until it falls apart sort of quilt.
The small squares are 2.5" and were all cut on my Accuquilt cutter. The die has9 squares on it and I put 4 layers of fabric in each time so each roll through the cutter left me with 36 perfect squares. As you can imagine it didn't take long to cut all the squares need for the quilt.
I decided to use a quilt as you go technique and each block was quilted before being joined to another block. This meant I never had more than one 12" square plus wadding and backing under the sewing machine at any one time. I didn't want to free motion this quilt as I thought straight lines would emphasise the pattern better. I found inspiration for the quilting at
PetitDesigns blog and am really pleased with the way it turned out. Much more interesting to look at than Quilt in the Ditch and to be honest much easier to do. I just lined up the edge of my walking foot with the seam and quilted. The box effect around where the seams meet looks complicated but isn't.
Once quilted the blocks were joined to each other using a technique I learned in a
Craftsy class called Quilting Big Quilts on a Small Machine by Ann Petersen. For my first attempt I used the walking foot to try and keep everythng under contol as there are 6 layers under the needle but I found it difficult to keep a consistent 1/4 inch so I swapped to my 1/4" foot, crossed my fingers it would cope with that many layers and tried again. It worked like a dream. The only time I had the whole quilt under the machine was when I added the last row of blocks and attached the binding, this made the whole project so much more enjoyable. I will be using this technique again many times I suspect.
I wanted the back of the quilt to appeal to my train obsessed husband and as large prints could be used to effect on this quilt I, at last, have found a use for some of the collection of railway themed fabric that has built up in my stash. I have a feeling this quilt might well be displayed back to front as often as the right way round.
I really enjoyed making this quilt which I hope will be a sign of things to come for 2013.
When I found out that one of the Yahoo groups I belong to has a secondary group just for the making and swapping of fabric postcards I couldn't join up fast enough. What a way to combine two favourite hobbies, quilting and exchanging postcards. Once I'd been accepted as a member one of the moderators offered to send me a card so that I could see the sort of thing the group made. It arrived this morning and I'm thrilled with it. It think it is lovely, it made it through the post unscathed and while the local postie is used to postcards from all over the world arriving for me this was a first even for her. I'm sure she will get used to it over the next few months.
Christmas is turning into a dim memory, the New Year has been celebrated and all that's left in the fridge from the two occassions are some sad bits of this and that, they need to be used up but I can't face any more Stilton, the yoghurt just doesn't appeal and I really don't want to bake anything complicated The answer to my quandary is Cornbread. I love the stuff, it's easy to make and doesn't object when all sorts of unusual flavours get thrown into it. Anyway I got out my basic recipe replaced most of the milk with yoghurt, added the Stilton and baked as usual. It's very,very tasty. Should go well alongside the Piri-Piri chicken Leigh is planning on cooking tonight.
My lovely friend Heidi included this delicious Orange and Cinnamon tea as part of my Christmas present. It is so tasty that I'm drinking it in preference to coffee, something unheard of in this house. And it looks so pretty in the glass. This box of tea bags is going to be used up pretty quickly so I better start looking around to see if a version is available in the UK otherwise I might just have to start importing it by the bucket-load