I quickly got to work on my first project, reminding myself how to make a very basic patchwork quilt. I had it in mind as a present for my grandma's 90th birthday, so had to keep it simple!
Using a 4" square block design and 3 materials, I learned how to piece blocks, why ironing your seams is so important and how not to tackle binding. I bought myself a cutting board and rotary cutter (which revolutionised things) and spent a lot of time on You Tube checking out videos of techniques.
The quilt itself was far from perfect (although my 90 year old grandma seemed to like it), but certainly whetted my appetite to tackle something more.
With friends getting married in June, I decided to make their wedding present, not realising quite what a mammoth task I would be taking on in designing and making a kingsize quilt.
Once again, I decided to keep the design fairly simple, although I did branch out from the absolute basics of my first attempt.
I was still ignorant of the existance of recognised block patterns, so just played with Excel to create a pattern which once again played around the theme of a 4" block. The middle panel was 2" squares, with a border of 2x4" panels, followed by 4" squares and a further narrow border, all with corner detailing. The edge was pieced in 8" panels, and the whole was bias bound.
Using recognised blocks would have made the piecing easier, but the lessons I learned making my grandma's quilt meant it was still reasonably straightforward.
Working on such a large scale did prove challenging, and I did eventually have to take it into work to baste the 3 layers together (patchwork top, batting/wadding and backing fabric) as I did not have a bit of floor big enough to lay it out completely flat in the house! I usually baste with safety pins, but given the size of the quilt and the forces which it therefore exerted trying to move the 3 layers, I could not get it tightly attached enough with them. I eventually resorted to a pricing gun, putting tiny plastic tacks (like shops use to attach price tags) in at 2" intervals throughout the whole quilt. This worked well, but was a pain to remove! If I tackled something like this again, I would probably manually tack it - harder work in the first place, but much easier to remove.
For the binding I made my own bias binding, and machine sewed it to the front of the quilt, manually finishing it to the back. I couldn't feel the end of my index finger for 4 days after all that hand sewing! Still, I think the finished result was worth it.
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