I’ve just finished this wall hanging of harvest mice for my sewing room. I actually started this in January last year as part of the declutter challenge, I did the right hand side and then it just stayed on my design wall, waiting for the other half. When the declutter challenge came round again this year, I knew what to do as my ‘treat’ project, the left hand side!

Here it is a couple of weeks ago, both sides machine embroidered, it just needed quilting.

I’d already chosen a thread for quilting, the purple and gold thread you can see in the photo. I felt it was too dark for the pale gold and light mauve areas so I also used a variegated pale gold thread, they’re both Wonderfil threads which are nice and fine for this kind of quilting.

I mulled over how to quilt it for quite some time, Andrea (the designer) used a double flame shape but I felt I wanted something a bit easier, it wasn’t the quilt to try a new pattern on. I decided in the end to do a fairly small meander. I sandwiched the quilt with some 80/20 batting and backed it with a batik fabric which has a fine purple leaf design over a pale gold background. I’ve had it for several years in my stash, I bought it on impulse as I loved the colours but it was always too busy for any quilt I tried it with. The colours matched perfectly with this quilt and I even had just enough left for binding.

I started quilting with the darker thread, meandering up and down the various spaces, I overlapped a little onto the lighter blocks to help it to blend. I then changed to the light gold variegated which has also got some very pale mauve in, meandering over the lighter blocks. I’m really pleased how the two colour threads have worked out as you can’t actually tell, it all just blends together. My free motion quilting is improving, there is still a few wobbles when I’ve lost the plot where to go but I’m happy with it.

I bound it with the backing fabric, a plain might have been better but it’s on! I remembered to put triangles in the top corners to catch the hanging pole in. I hand-stitched the binding down at my patchwork group, it was a nice easy project to take along to stitch and chat.

Here is my finished wall hanging, it’s going in my sewing room. I just need to get a length of dowling.

I’ve still quite a few kits to make from Raggedy Ruff Designs, so I need to keep going with them.