Lucy Boston finished

My version of Lucy Boston's Patchwork of the Crosses is all done! - quilted (on my domestic sewing machine) and bound.

Hanging

Folded on a bed

After deliberating about the quilting I just stitched a double outline in the cream. I am pretty happy with how that looks - still puffy but also helping the blocks stand out. Thanks for comments received - all helpful and much appreciated :)

Thought I'd show how I edged/bound the quilt as the pattern has no actual border finish instructions. A couple of options - you could applique the outer English Paper pieces on to a strip of fabric, or you could just chop off through the outer EP pieces to make a straight edge ...  

How I did it?...the pictures tell the story :)

Stitching on the binding strip

Ready to mitre

Mitred corner binding

English Paper pieced squares sewn into binding 

Those squares now trimmed 

Binding pinned ready to hem the back

Some of the quilted blocks:

Now  just a couple of garden photos to show that summer is almost over - and autumn ready to move in (can't say I'm sorry):

Sedum - pops up every year, end of summer

Windflowers - cue autumn

Next post there will be a new project - yippee!

Fabrics in my Stars

Here is my paper pieced "Mary Leggett" so far: 

 Carla suggested showing the fabrics I used to fussy cut these stars - good idea I thought !?

Can you spot the star made from this fabric (below)? It is close to the top right of the quilt photo. 

The more complex stars have two fabrics joined together. So here are some photos of these stars next to the fabrics from which they were made :

So... no magic there ...it just changes the way you look at fabric! A lot of the fabrics chosen have a definite stripe or line in them. This is handy for marking the border join between two fabrics. It also means you can form a hexagon shape in the middle of the stars. 

I noticed that the original quilt had a quite a few of the stars pieced in such a way that there was this hexagon fabric-patterned into the middle. So that is what I have aimed for in a lot of mine. 

It echoes the shape of the brown hexagon joiners - clever woman that Mary! 

Rosebuds ...with whiskers

While adding embroidery (as per pattern) to my Baltimore Album blocks I was wondering ....what are these whiskers on the end of the buds?  

So (being a bright spark) I looked in the garden where roses are in flower now. Of course, the whiskers are simplified sepals

While I was out there I checked the Iceberg roses down the driveway ...

...and picked a bunch ...and here are the same sepal whiskers again. Good to know!

It is a nice time for roses at the moment. These large apricot/ yellow ones (Dame Elizabeth Murdoch - an Australian rose) smell divine: 

Back to quilting...

Some more stars for the Mary Leggett Star Bouquet - having fun fussy cutting these: 

Here's a comparison of front and back - hardly recognisable! The papers are still in  - not to be removed until they are securely sewn together with the brown hexagon joiners: 

You'll be getting sick of seeing these soon/already - but it is a fairly slow process. At least I am enjoying the journey :)

Progress and a win

Here is the latest progress with three projects....has been a little slow as I have been working full time for a couple to weeks to relieve at work - always seems to mean less sewing time :(

Baltimore Album block 17 with it's funny little bug in the middle:

Mary Leggett's Star Bouquet: some more stars and hexagons and it is getting slowly bigger: 

Here is a collage of some of the new stars in the quilt:

Had fun cutting and piecing here

And lastly ...some domestic machine quilting progress on Lucy Boston Patchwork of the Crosses:

 

Looking nice and puffy because so far I have only outlined in the ditch around hexagons and squares - not across any of them.

Close up to show the quilting 

Closer still...

Because all the piecing was by hand - every little square and hexagon English Paper pieced together - I think it is important not to lose sight of all those little pieces by machine quilting all over it. So I am tempted just to outline, and keep it looking "hand made" rather than "machine made".

On the other hand I think it might be nice to make the coloured blocks stand out from the cream background. So I have been deliberating whether to stipple quilt in all the cream   ( I quite like stippling but there will be a lot of it!)

The original quilt was just a coverlet of course...not quilted at all. 

                   Hmmm .... any thoughts?

And now for the "win": 

I've had the amazing good luck to have won a quilt kit from Sue at I Sew Quilts blog. Such a generous giveaway  - many, many thanks to Sue and her gorgeous (and highly talented I might add) granddaughter Abigail. And it is not just any kit, but one in a line of fabric that I have loved for ages - Froncie Quinn's "In the Time of Toile".

Picture from Sue's blog post giveaway

I'm really looking forward to making this quilt - and especially looking forward to the centre basket - looks like  broderie perse flowers ! 

Will keep you posted (hoping desperately I don't make a mess of it ) and many thanks again Sue :)

Mary Leggett's Star Bouquet quilt

I like to regularly look through my treasured collection of quilt history books - such a treat (the word "droolfest" comes to mind?)

 Recently this photo leapt out at me - Mary M. Leggett's Star Bouquet quilt :

Photo of page from the book below

The photo of Mary's quilt is on page 24 of one of my favourite quilt history books

According to the authors Mary M. Leggett made the quilt in 1862. It was made of silk, "template-pieced", and measured 95" x 77 1/2 ". 

I love it - particularly the way the colours pop out of the milk chocolate background. And on closer inspection you can see that she has taken great care in fussy cutting her silks, even joining a couple of  fabrics in the diamonds to increase the complexity of some of the stars. Here is a close up photo (from the book again):

There is a neat seam visible between the two fabrics used in each diamond on all the stars in this picture  - except the top right lilac star. 

So ... you might have guessed my new project ? 

Yep -  to make a reproduction (or more a "version") of this quilt.  

Some rough Maths makes me think Mary's stars were about 6.5" across point to point. After a bit of experimenting, I have decided to make 4.5" stars because I want to make more of them (but not a bigger quilt!) and the hexagons she made would be quite large for English Paper Piecing by hand (my preferred method). I am using  hexagons and diamonds with 1.25 " edges - a comfortable size to work with. And much as I'd love to use silks for the luxurious look of it, I'll settle for cottons from the stash. Those changes make it more a "version" than a "reproduction" I think?

First to select fabrics :

The background behind the photos is the chocolate/ cinnamon homespun for the hexagons

Then ...printing the diamonds onto light card - free download from here :

Diamonds ready to cut up

Then ...constructing some diamonds made of joined fabric strips:

Back of fabrics with diamonds marked to cut out

Paperclips holding  fabric over papers ready for hand basting

The finished star

And here is the extent of my quilt so far :

Tell you what - it is great to be playing with more fabric, fiddling with fussy cutting, and EPP again - such fun isn't it ?!

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. 

Baltimore blocks 14, 15 and 16 and embroidery

More progress on  Baltimore album blocks:

Block 15  -  after much deliberating I decided to add some embroidery - just felt there was a need for some definition on the more complex applique blocks - the ones with a layered look. The pictures of the original quilts (in the pattern pack) had what appears to be simple if not crude embroidery (maybe some inked details actually) and all in dark brown/black? So I thought it didn't need to be too sophisticated - which suits me fine as I am no embroiderer!

Block 15

With the next block I photographed it before adding embroidery and then after - for comparison (hopefully you can see a difference!) ...

Block 16 before embroidery

Block 16 with embroidery

And here is Block 14  - started a couple of posts back - now finished. No embroidery as it is one of the simpler,  two dimensional blocks :

Block 14

Now I mustn't forget to go back and add embroidery to a few of the blocks already finished  ...

I've enjoyed seeing the impressive lists of "Projects planned for 2013" on other quilting blogs - Wow, so much inspiration there! must get sewing...