Every Friday on Confessions of a Fabric Addict there’s a linky party called Can I have a Whoop Whoop! Well I definately giving myself a whoop whoop today! I have stitched and gifted my Thankyou quilt all within about two weeks!

I was on a tight timescale as my family Doctor is retiring this week, she’s been looking after me and my family for 25 years, she’s been brilliant and will  be greatly missed. I decided to make her a quilt as a thank you.

I chose the disappearing four patch as it’s fairly quick to put together, I had a Moda layer cake in my drawer so I cut them into 5″ squares as the basis for the quilt. It went together fairly easily after a slight pickle with the borders and insufficient fabric!

I did a pieced back from fat quarters and spare layer cake squares, I like the effect of a pieced back and it nicely used up some of my stash, it’s a bit like having a reversible quilt! I basted the layers together with spray adhesive 501, I was converted onto it by Stuart Hillard of the Great British Sewing Bee when he demonstrated at the WI Centenary Fair. It’s so much easier and more effective than the hand-basting I used to do!

I’m pretty new to free motion quilting, this is only the third quilt I’ve done, but I can see the improvements. I quilted with a simple meandering line, a doodle on the sewing machine! I used a variegated quilting thread on top and a beige underneath. Obviously the bits where my quilting was a bit dodgy was on the plain blue where it stands out a mile! One thing I do find difficult is seeing where I’m going when I’m sewing backwards! I’m not quite sure about my tension either as It’s not ideal underneath. I keep my feed dogs up when I’m fmq to help with tension, so I’m not quite sure how to resolve that one.

I spent a quiet evening handstitching all the binding down with the help of my quilting clips and then embroidered a little message and my initials and date on the back.

I popped it in a gift bag with a card and dropped it off at the surgery yesterday, hopefully she will like it.

Thank you Quilt