Seeing Spots - Finished Quilt

This quilt has been quite a long time in the making. I did the quilt top back in November 2011, and started quilting it then, doing bits and pieces of the hand quilting over the following summer, but then it got put aside and not picked up for a long time.



However, I recently finished the quilting on it, and then eventually got around to getting some fabric for the binding and doing that, and now it's finally finished! Hooray!



Not much to say that hasn't already been said, but I do adore the hand quilting on this one. The matching threads on the front make a gorgeous pattern on the back!

Oh, and incase I come back to check this in the future, I chose bamboo batting for it, which is really lovely and soft, and was fine for hand quilting with,



This one has pride of place on my couch, for snuggling under when I need a little extra warmth.

Quietly busy...

While things have been a bit quiet around here lately, it's because things have been busy elsewhere in my life. But that doesn't mean I haven't been working on things. In particular I have been slowly working on a long forgotten work in progress, a quilt that has been sat on the back of my couch for about 2 years waiting for the last third or so if hand quilting to be finished.

I'm getting close to finishing now, and will hopefully soon be able to go and pick out some binding...

Seeing spots

Mindy has assisted me in naming this quilt - "seeing spots". Which is now basted and ready to quilt. I have decided to go with the basic quilting of outlining the L shapes with the matching thread, which I think will look awesome on the back. Time will tell.

Quilting Opinions Please

Yesterday I went to GJs in my lunch break. GJs is about 5km from where I work, and I rode like the wind to get there and back in my lunch break, and I managed it, hurrah! While I was there I got the backing, quilting thread and batting for my spotty quilt (which still needs a name, so suggestions gratefully taken).

I had intended to get the grey version of the spotty backing fabric that I used on my genome quilt, however they were all out of it so I had to change my plans. I stuck with the grey scheme though and got two grey homespuns. I am planning on hand quilting it with perle 8 threads, and Georgia was kind enough to order me in some colours to match my fabrics, 5 of the 6 colours have come in so far, I'm just waiting on some teal as my last colour. I also got some bamboo batting for the middle. I've not used bamboo before, but I want to try some new things to see what I like the most, so I shall report back on how it turns out.

Last night, however, I fell over in the garden and sprained my ankle, which is now pretty sore and very swollen. Nevertheless, one to look for silver linings, I realised that I my "sewing machine foot" was still perfectly fine (I sprained the left), so after resting most of the day I spent a couple of hours this afternoon sewing the quilt top together, so the day wasn't a complete bust.

Now, the reason for posting this now - I'd like suggestions/opinions for quilting this please. I want to hand quilt it, and I (will) have perle 8 thread to match the 6 main colours of the fabrics. How would you quilt it??

Retreat 2.0

This past weekend I headed up to hepburn springs again for another retreat. We had such fun on the last retreat back in May that we booked in for another, even longer, one while we were still there. This time we stayed 3 nights, and it was lots of fun and incredibly productive.

I got lots of sewing done, including assembling the blocks for two quilt tops. Above are the base blocks for the quilt I am making with the spotty sateen fabric I bought earlier in the year. The blocks have since been cut into quarters bento box style, and the quarters trimmed to 8" square ready to be assembled into a quilt top.


Below are the rest of the hexagons that I started on the other weekend, and I love how they look, piecing them together has definitely transformed the fabric. I just need to get some solid cream fabric and I will begin assembling the quilt top of this one too.

This means that soon I'll have some quilting projects on the go again, which i'm excited about. I'm planning on hand quilting the spotty one, although don't exactly know what design yet, so suggestions gratefully received.  In contrast I'm considering machine free motion quilting the hexagon one, probably just with a stippling pattern, however as i'm hoping the quilt will be about queen sized I may regret that decision and change my mind with either the quilting method or design.


I did get some other stuff done over the weekend, about which I shall blog in due course.