I’m getting there! There’s light at the end of the tunnel!!

I’ve cracked on with this quilt, hand-stitching all those leaves to the corners. I discovered that on a Friday night Andrew Lloyd Webber is doing a free screening on one of his musicals, it’s a perfect accompaniment to hand-sewing! I missed the first week which was Jesus Christ Superstar, last week was Phantom of the Opera, which is one of my favourite musicals, I just love the power of the music. This week was Love Never Dies, it’s the sequel to Phantom but I really didn’t enjoy this one much, the storyline was just too far-fetched! I got lots of sewing done though! Three weeks ago I was stitching leaves on…

There’s eighty leaves on the quilt altogether! Once all the leaves were stitched I made some 1/4″ bias binding, typically the fabric I wanted to use only gave me 20″ lengths and I needed 22″, so I had to piece it, though making one long strip was probably easier than 4 short ones. We had to undo a small hole in one of the seams to tuck the ends in as we sewed it on.

The quilt is pretty big now, about 72″, so it’s not easy to photograph. I had a bit of a brainwave though, I folded all four corners into the middle so you can see them all…

I’ve also made the blocks for the next border. This one took a little working out as I’m not making it according to Sarah Fielke’s design. The pattern is for another deep border with dozens of tiny triangles on! I decided I didn’t want such a big quilt, I’ve got three king size ones already, I wanted this one for the double bed in our guest room. I also felt it was quite a fussy border for the quilt, I wanted something a little simpler. Part of the design was some large triangles. I decided to adapt this, I checked the measurements and worked out what size of flying geese I would need to get the effect I wanted. I used the fabric with blue trees on for the base and then cut the squares in the mid to dark blue, green and purple fabrics. I prefer leaving the base rectangle intact, not trimmed away, as it means if my triangles are slightly off I still have the true measurement from the rectangle.

It took ages to work out the colour placements of the triangles! My original thought was to have all the colours mixed, but it looked much better in pairs. Of course I was left with two flying geese which wouldn’t pair up, so I unpicked and re-sewed them. I’m really pleased with how it’s worked out, especially with the trees in the background.

Once these are stitched onto the quilt, with silver grey in the corners, I just have three houses to applique in each corner and the top is finished! This is a quarter of my quilt so far…

I’m going to send this to a long armer to be quilted as even with my extra length on my new sewing machine, I think this would be pushing it. I’ll wait until the lockdown is over and then go and see them.

Hand Quilt Along Links

This Hand Quilt Along is an opportunity for hand quilters and piecers to share and motivate one another. We post every three weeks, to show our progress and encourage one another.  If you have a hand quilting project and would like to join our group contact Kathy at the link below.

Kathy, Margaret, Tracy, Deb, Susan,  Nanette,  Edith, Sharon, Karrin, Gretchen, Kathi,  Bella, Daisy, Connie and Monica

I’ll also be linking up with Kathy’s Quilts for Slow Stitching Sunday.