One for you and one for me

I am pleased to report that to date I have managed to maintain majority control over my Lizard Ridge blanket, but just in case H's covetous glances towards it turn into anything more serious, I've been busy with something a little speedier than knitting another Lizard Ridge.

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!

From our textile reporter:

Lost: One Knitter. Last seen in the vicinity of an enormous star quilt and her sewing machine.



Whilst it is believed that the knitter in question may have been buried in an avalanche of quilt, our special correspondent, who has been talking to rescuers at the scene, has been unable to confirm the Knitter's state of mind as it appears that he has been distracted by the prettiness of the quilt itself and is now curled into a fetal position clutching the border of the quilt mountain to his cheek, only murmuring "soft and cuddly"; "look! starry!"; "will it be finished soon?"; and "my preciousssssss"

As I stood at the foot of this cascade of cotton I heard a muffled "but how do they manage it? how do they do all that quilting on so much fabric?!" but when I leaned closer I heard only the softly hacking rattle of a bobbin turning in its casing as the outline of stars appeared from underneath the walking foot.

And now, back to the studio!

A star, so bright

All the stars are coming out tonight
They’re lighting up the sky tonight

It will be no surprise to anyone who knows me to discover that I frequently underestimate time and overestimate how much I can achieve in that time. Accordingly, shortly before I started this wonderful holiday week I made a list of everything that I wanted to accomplish; suffice to say that it contains enough quilting, knitting, embroidery etc to occupy a week each. However, one true aim was to finish putting together my Star-along quilt.

I finished the setting blocks on Tuesday afternoon and did all the cutting for the sashing blocks. I like the cutting but I really need a higher work surface to cut on and that's not something that I can make from shoe boxes and sellotape - I'll have to give that one some thought.

Yesterday I devoted myself to fights with my sewing machine over the bobbin and the thread tension, which I still don't really understand. I was getting little locks on the surface of the fabric where it looks like the top thread is not actually being pulled through the fabric. The manual said loosen the top thread tension which at one point I could take down to 0 with no discernible difference save that the back was a jumble of loose thread. I think it has something to do with the bobbin so I just kept resetting the bobbin until it worked but it was all very frustrating.

Anyway, I have a quilt:


And it's massive - I was trying to take pictures last night but I just couldn't get it all in!

This is over a king size bed, and it's only slightly smaller than the duvet:



And here we have the quilt smothering our comfortable two-seater sofa



It wasn't until this morning that I could take this photo, by laying it on the lawn and leaning out of the bedroom window:



It is I think a classic beginner level quilt, if you look closely there are blunt triangles and lines that don't quite match up but I don't really care. AmandaJean has done a fantastic job with her second quiltalong and I highly recommend it. My massive quilt is not going to get much bigger, I thought about adding a border but I don't have enough fabric so instead it will get a simple blue binding to match the setting blocks when I've quilted it (when!!! eek). I need to practice on something a little bit smaller first and then we can try this one.

I'm contemplating quilting down the diagonal lines made by the setting blocks and then outlining each star or something like that - any suggestions?

My second quilting project for the day/week (yes, I know, see above under reference 'obsessive') is also taking inspiration from another tutorial from AmandaJean, this time a good deal smaller,



This isn't quite finished but you can get the idea of what it will look like. Underneath the fabric is a cheap pinboard from Ikea (I think it may have been called Chris) which I bought for my library/study/who-are-we-kidding-sewing-room. It is pinboard brown in a tasty pine frame, not the thing for my haven.

So, I cut strips of fabric 2" wide and sewed them together and then cut three patches at different angles 4.5" wide, and the square strips. The pieces in between are some relatively heavy grade calico.

I love the fact that from a distance it looks as though it might be slightly floral, and then close up:


It's CAKE

Sparkly cake. The child within me is alive and well.

H has a plan for attaching the pin board cozy to the pinboard which involves one of his palette knives and a staple-gun. Apparently a staple-gun is a useful thing to have around so he is quite pleased to be getting one. My role is clearly to stand by with bandages and check it goes on straight!

Take Two

Patchwork is a discipline of the three Ps - Precision, Patience and Prozac. I'm working on the first, developing the second pretty quickly and desperately in need of the third.

However, I have had a very successful day at the sewing machine and cutting board, tackling the latest Stars and I have completed the Week 5 star which was giving me so much hassle last week. I still had to sew every seam at least four times and you can probably see the remains of the other threads that I haven't quite picked up.


I think the change in fabric has helped too as the very pale blue in the original is quite flimsy and the points of the triangles kept getting pulled round while I was sewing them. This one is the right size and although I may loose a few of the outside points when I sew it up, I'm happy with it.

This:

Is version one of the Week 6 block. It was only when I took this photo that I notice how totally out the alignment is. I've taken it apart and rebuilt it so that all the lines are where they should be. It turned out that this time my technique was correct but my copying of the measurements from AmandaJean was total rubbish!

I'm not far off halfway now - there are 7 more stars and another 6 setting blocks to do before I can start to put it all together so here's some halfway-ish pictures:




It's going to be a fantastic size for curling up on the sofa - H came to see it all laid out and his first response was "ooooh, I want one - hang on, I've got one", so I think any idea I may have had that it would be me curled up on the sofa are sadly delusional.

So here are my final Saturday thoughts on quilting (or patchwork really):

1 - I have to concentrate a lot harder than when I'm knitting.
2- Triangles = grrrrrrr
3- I love playing with all the fabrics from my stash
4 -It gets big very quickly
5 - this could get addictive

Watch out for more quilts coming soon! Actually I bought a copy of McCall's Scrap Quilts magazine the other day and I love just about all of the patterns in there - clearly geometric scrap quilts are my thing!