Saturday 8 June 2013

Carolina Lily - border

First border pinned and part appliqued. It is sooo good to be sewing it down now !

Sounds simple enough but there was a fair bit of fiddling around preparation to get to this point ( isn't there always?! or maybe that is just me).

Just a run through of the border prep:
  •  photocopied the Quiltmania pattern sheet. This was just a corner snippet of the border at 50% shrunk - that is all that was provided. So I had to double the size and make a patchwork of 6 photocopies. 
The magazine pattern (on right) and my 'patchwork' enlargement photocopies

  • made a full size placement pattern for the side and top border on a roll of sandwich paper - involved a lot of freehand sketching (and erasing) curves to fit it evenly.

The photocopy corner pattern and my placement  paper pattern to match 

My paper placement pattern sheets laid around the centre blocks
  • Cut fabric border strips and pencil on the placement lines for bias strips 
  • prepared leaves (cut from a template),  lily flowers (EPP as for centre blocks), and bias strips
  • Then for the fun part -  pin and hand applique :)


Must tell you about a wonderful book that arrived this week - just my sort of book. 

This is the special book and catalogue published for the Quilts 1700-1945 Exhibition (British quiltmaking history plus the Australian Rajah quilt) to be held at the Queensland Art Gallery (Australia). Unfortunately I live interstate and am not likely to be attending but it sounded so wonderful that I pre-ordered their book. 
I am SO impressed with it -  beautiful, quality illustrations, excellent articles from different contributors and very good value for money in mho. It is a heavy book even though it is paperback - almost 200 pages. 
Contents page from the book
A sample of different illustrations from the book
Hope you get lots of sewing (or quilty reading?) done over this long weekend! 

23 comments:

  1. Wow what a beauty! I have drooled over this quilt since I first saw it in Quiltmania. Your version is gorgeous, and its so fun to see your progress! Just love it!

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  2. You are making such fast progress. All that preparation is worth it for when you get to sit and stitch. Lovely book too.

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  3. Wow Hilda you have been very busy sewing!
    The border looks great and it's worth all the fiddling.
    I'm going to Brisbane to see the quilts and have just ordered the book - thanks for the link.

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  4. Oooooh! That border is looking good. So much hand work - it's going to be beautiful. Interesting book.

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  6. Your first border looks fantastic.

    Greetings, Manuela

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  7. Your quilt is just amazing - sure looks like a lot of work to get that border finished, but it's worth it (easy for me to say!), it's just beautiful.

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  8. Your border is awesome. It's not fast and easy to get an appliqué border prepped and ready. Thanks for sharing your steps. It is fiddle work, but so worth it.

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  9. Your quilt will be beautiful! I love it! It is hard to get to the stitching part sometimes isn't it! I love that book...that bed you showed has been a picture I have had for about 20 years! I have always thought it was so elegant looking! I'd love to hang those curtains behind a bed sometime...how awesome would that be!

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  10. I am worn out just reading about how you created the guide for the borders and got all the pieces placed so nice and orderly. The border is going to be the icing on the cake.

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  11. wow - your border is absolutely gorgeous!
    what a pretty book!

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  12. I can't believe the progress you are making on this quilt. It's just simply fantastic.

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  13. This is going to be a lovely quilt and your border is looking good. Our book for the V&A quilt show also arrived this week and it is a great read. Take care.

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  14. Thanks for taking use through the steps. This so intimidates me and I plan to do an applique border on my hexie quilt. I just need to take it one step at a time. Will be a while before I get to it so I need to gather my courage. Love how this is coming along. You do beautiful work.

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  15. Your border is going to be just stunning!!! You have worked fast on this quilt top. I do like the little print in the flowers. Thanks for showing how you do your borders when the pattern is not the needed size.

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  16. You are making such great progress with your Carolina Lily quilt! That border is simply beautiful!! I'm going with Chris J and sewing friends to Brisbane to see the exhibition. I think it'll be really worth the trip to see the quilts, and it'll be a hoot to have an adventure with my quilting buddies. I'll keep an eye out for the catalogue, thanks for letting us know about it.

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  17. You've done well getting that border started, Ithink I would have given up when I realised I would have to enlarge the pattern!

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  18. The border is really fantastic. I like seeing how you worked it out with just a small part of the pattern.

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  19. Ooh, your border is looking so wonderful! There is always so much prep work to get it right that the stitching seems to fly by.:)

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  20. Hi your Carolina Lily quilt will be so beautiful! Border looks great. You dropped into my blog in December and left a comment, thank you, I've been out of blog action for months. I'm so glad I came to see your blog, your work is lovely, I will certainly be back.

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  21. What a beautiful border! Your work is super nice and it shows how patient & meticulous you are.

    The book looks amazing - wish it was available in the US. So many recent books based on antique/traditional qullts have been coming from European or Australian collections and are of a superior quality. What a treasure for you.

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  22. Beautiful - you have made quite a bit of progress on this quilt!

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