On Monday I delivered my quilt for Project Linus to a lovely quilt shop in Saltaire, Barley Craft Fabrics, I’d not been before as it’s difficult to get to Saltaire by bus from Otley, despite being fairly close. It’s only a little shop but boy do they squeeze a lot of fabrics in, they had a great selection and of course I fell for a few fat quarters!! They were delighted with the quilt so I’m now hoping to make a few more for Project Linus with my ever growing pile of scraps. This was my quilt…
When I did the Sewing Room Declutter in January I found two almost finished quilts that I’d stashed away, out of sight and out of mind, one was the quilt above, the second one was a Christmas quilt I started back in 2021, it was a QAL by the Fat Quarter Shop called All the Trimmings. I got as far as sandwiching it and starting the quilting, I think I then lost inspiration for the quilting.
I pulled it out of the hiding place in January and sat it on my workstation, hoping to guilt myself into finishing it. It worked!! As soon as the Project Linus quilt was finished I cracked on with the Christmas one.
I had already quilted the bows and half the stockings, so I could just continue the same with the other stockings stitching holly leaves and berries over the main sock and zigzags over the tops.
The baubles (or berries!) on the top I did with a spiral in the circle and then arcs across the oval ones. The Christmas trees caused most head-scratching. I just couldn’t think of any design for it. In the end I followed the lines of the pieces to make overlapping squares, it looked a bit boring so I added a scalloped border in red. It’s not turned out great but it’s quilted! Of course after I had done that bit I thought of a better way of quilting it, lots of irregular zigzags like the branches of a fir tree, but it’s too late. I’m not frogging it!
I felt the quilt needed a little something to lift it, I decided on a red flange round the border. I had some red bumbleberry fabric in my stash which matched perfectly. I cut a 1″ strip, folded it in half and stitched it round before adding the blue border as usual. I would have liked a narrower flange but I always chicken out as I can’t see it when I’m stitching so I’m always worried I’ll wobble and it will disappear into the binding 🙂
It’s not perfect, there’s points missing and it’s not a smooth as it should be, but it’s finished and I’ll find a home for it this Christmas…and it’s out of my sewing room 🙂
