It started with a sea of blue ribbons, which turned out to be far more than the 308 inches of binding that I needed so I think I'll need to make a mini blue quilt to use up the binding!
I machine sewed the border onto the quilt on Sunday afternoon and then sat down with needle and thread for the long tasks of tidying up all the loose ends from the quilting, and then neatly blind stitching the binding in place. It feels like it's taking forever on a quilt of this size but in the end, and almost without you realising it, you end up with the genuine article, a finished quilt.
As with the mini-quilts I followed Amanda-Jean's excellent tutorial which is here and which I cannot fault - it makes so much more sense to me than all the excerpts in the back of quilting magazines and books which focus so much more on the piecing than on the quilting.
Where the blanket is warm and cosy to wrap up in, the quilt is cool and soft and I have to admit that far from H running off with both of them, I tend to find that I've made myself a little nest out of both together; it's the perfect way to spend a knitting evening.
The quilt is also huge. If you thought the blanket was big, this is the same king size bed:
It's only a little bit smaller than the duvet! No-one ever said that it might not be the best plan to make a double quilt as a first effort so I just ploughed ahead regardless, and picked up what I didn't know along the way, and I'm glad because I love the finished product, mismatched seams, clipped points, wrinkled backing and all. Now I know how hard it is to manipulate that much quilt though my sewing machine I might re-think the quilting on the next one though!
And finally, it needed one last finishing touch:
This is definitely style over substance - I'm pretty sure that it would machine wash gently but I wanted to use a blue label on a blue quilt!
That looks fantastic Carie, really very beautiful.
ReplyDeleteSuperb! I also love the label. You're filling your home with heirlooms.
ReplyDelete