Carolina Lily completed

On a queen sized bed

Now just to show you what I did in the final stages (probably are lots of better ways to do this mind you!)...

Here it is with the quilting just finished, ready to trim, bind and wash:

I can tell you I felt a little bit worried as I shoved it in my front loading washing machine with a dose of wool wash and turned on the full wash cycle. I wanted to be sure to remove all that pen and I wanted high spin so it would not be too wet afterwards. I added several white colour catchers and here they are afterwards - must have picked up all the orange pen colour!

After the wash it was good incredibly fantastic to see that all the pen marks had disappeared. 

I wanted to square the quilt up before letting it dry on the timber floor for a couple of days. I always hope this will avoid any distortion that could happen if I just hang a new quilt on the line to dry. The squaring just involved pulling the corners and sides a little - so the diagonal corner and parallel side measurements were much the same.  Here it is drying:

Once it was dry I went over it checking for any loosened applique and threads to trim. I found four small lifts in the border vine where the applique thread (a fine silk thread) had come loose. Easily fixed and not bad at all considering the quilt is all hand applique and the poor thing has been dragged this way and that under the sewing machine and then given a few hefty spins in the washing machine. It is a fairly fragile thread - might have been better with something stronger. See the loose applique below?

Checking the back of the quilt here: 

Hanging it on the wall for some photos:

Well that was quite a task for me to quilt on my domestic machine. But I am really happy ( and so relieved) it has turned out with the look and feel I wanted - as close as I could  manage to the traditional hand-quilted look I love. Time for a little happy dance? Thanks for all your encouragement along the way. 

I am wondering if I am game enough now to tackle quilting my Burnt quilt - the finished top has been sitting waiting for quite a while... It is a big quilt (bigger than the Carolina Lily) but, without all that applique, may be easier to quilt. Perhaps a break from quilting first though!

 Remember this?

Something lovely is happening in the garden - signs of Spring! Do you recall that in June I planted a "tulip lasagne" in a pot? It thinks Spring is coming too.

Top finished

I have finished the top of my version of The Burnt Quilt - and it is a biggie - 109ins (233cm) long.

Hanging from the highest curtain rod it flows across the carpet

Lying on the floor

In the end the biggest challenge was that lovely Dutch chintz fabric that I used as the final  border.

I wanted to mitre the corners and, ideally, have each corner matching - with the blue vine sweeping across the inside of each corner.

And  - to cut a very long story short - that is pretty much how they ended up. Here are another two corners.

But - if you look closer at the border on all those edges you will see that I had to make one or two quite a few "cut and pastes" to adjust the fit. Lucky I had quite a lot of the fabric to play with. And lucky no one was there to take photos of me scrambling around the floor making these adjustments - and sighing (yep, just sighing) loudly as I went...

A collage of "cut and paste" border - see them all??

Well - that was a learning experience! and what did I learn? Don't use that fabric again!!

The end result is acceptable to me...and it is called "patchwork" after all.

This is the fabric I have set aside for the binding -  love it:

Anyway I have about had just about enough of that quilt for now so it is on the end of the queue for quilting. Goodness knows if  I will manage to quilt it in my normal fashion on my domestic sewing machine ...suspect it will not fit. There will be more "sighing" then too. 

Seeing stars...

Have just finished the applique of all the stars on my inner Burnt Quilt border...hence am seeing stars!

 They were  English paper pieced first, pressed, papers removed, and appliqued down. I should have done the applique before adding the other borders - made it awkward to manage with armfuls of fabric to turn, but we live and learn! A few of the stars up close...

They are great fun to make and I enjoyed making dozens of them in the Folk Art Basket quilt (Karen Cunningham class ) shown in an earlier post. Here are some of the stars on it 

Thanks to some lovely, encouraging comments on my Baltimore post (no pressure though LOL) I have started another block and this is progress so far on a basket 

THE FRONT

THE BACK

A bit messy but you can see how it gradually comes together with back basting, and marking only on the back of the fabric. I spend quite a while dithering about deciding on which green to use  - so have used a few different ones in these blocks , and am now trying to ensure there is a balance of the different greens across all the blocks, so they will look OK together. I don't seem to have the same trouble deciding on reds... maybe there are just less red choices?

The Burnt Quilt

I have been working on The Burnt Quilt aka "Oh dear, Mrs Tompkins" (Di Ford's lovely reproduction pattern ) - using the Dutch chintz central panel in the centre. I am also using a small stash of Dutch chintz florals in the big stars, though I hate chopping them up.

 If you know the pattern, you might see I have avoided doing the tricky inner borders by replacing them with appliqued red stars (fun to do with English paper piecing) . That is what I am working on at the moment.

Below is the fabric for the outer border - sensing a theme here - Dutch chintz again. 

For the feature square blocks where applique or broderie perse is suggested in the pattern, I took the opportunity  to feature squares of favourite old florals  ( or, reading between the lines there, maybe I took the easier option!?). Here are some of them - seriously lovely fabrics...