Gallimaufry: two thirds joined up

It’s almost done. I have 60% of it joined up.

I really, really like that narrow dark blue sashing between the squares. It puts a nice crisp edge on them, lines everything up, and is dark enough to throw everything else into contrast. Give me to the end of the week and I’ll have the joining up done and be ready to get the binding on.

There was a point halfway through making the blocks when I had a moment of doubt. Would it clash with the bird/seashell fabric for Miz Lizzie’s curtains?  I don’t think so, on reflection. What do you think? Even if it’s a little bit off, I love this quilt. Can’t wait to use it for the first time on our next trip. Sadly that’ll probably not be till October

Hope the good weather holds so I can take the final photos outside. Then you’ll see what it really looks like…

Gallimaufry: all quilted

That’s that lot done.

Now for the trimming out and then joining up, always the least enjoyable part, but necessary 🙂 I need some more dark blue for the front sashing, there’s not enough left over from the Blue Hour quilt to get the job finished. I must also remember to use light blue thread or it’ll show up too much against the light blue backing – so long as I stitch carefully in the ditch on the fronts, it won’t show against the dark blue on the quilt front, as I discovered on Blue Hour, when I used cream thread. I like the effect of the pale coral thread against the dark blue, it’s pretty. Not sure how noticeable it is compared with cream, but I know it’s there, which is all that really matters.

I didn’t do my neatest ever job of hand-quilting the Miz Lizzie block in a big stitch and a variety of thread colours, but it’s cute and puffy and I like it!

Just a short post today, I have work to do for ScrapHappy and the SAL, which are both due this weekend!

Gallimaufry: let the quilting begin

Right, final (probably) layout.

I say probably because I don’t rule out wanting to swap a couple of blocks once they’re all quilted. In fact I can see two right now that I want to change. Funny how you can’t see it for looking in real life, but it jumps out at you in a photo….

I’ve cut batting and backing for the first row, and now I need to have a hard (but short) think about how this is going to be quilted. If I go with the cross hatching I did on the Blue Hour quilt, I’ll be running over some of the features that make the blocks interesting. On the other hand, it’s a much longer job if I come up with custom designs for each style of block. Perhaps a combination is the right idea: cross hatching on the simpler scrappy, snowball and 9-patch blocks, and something a bit different on the sunray, twister and bubbles blocks. The trick will be to keep to the same amount of quilting so that the blocks stay the same size in the end. Too much close quilting = smaller block.

Whatever I end up doing, I’ll have that gorgeous pale coral pink thread to work with 🙂

Blue, and Birds

I’ve completed the quilting on the Blue Hour quilt 🙂

They’re all the same, nice simple 3 inch square cross hatching. And I’ve decided, after extensive auditioning, that the sashing will be cream, same as the backing. Yes, it’ll show the dirt more, which isn’t such a great thing on caravan trips, but the quilt can easily be washed and I much prefer the way it looks. I also LOVE how it works with the fabric I’ve bought for Miz Lizzie’s curtains, and the blue and white ticking for the seats.

… In other news, Sir Horace and Lady Laetitia Bush Stone-Curlew are still gamely guarding their estates, and only this afternoon saw off a vulgar gaggle of sacred ibis, who were sunbathing and honking in the spot selected by Lady Laetitia for the nursery. Despite this unseemly conduct, both maintained a stiff upper lip beak, and stared down the interlopers, who retired further down the garden, ruffled and agitated. No sign of an egg a prospective heir yet, but we live in hope.

Blue three

In case you fondly imagined I was taking a rest from the Blue quilt…

All blocks are now completed, I’ve finalised the layout, and eight blocks in the top two rows are quilted. The cross hatching is on a 3 inch square grid, which after some testing I found was the perfect balance between the need to secure the layers and keeping the feel of the block flexible and soft after quilting. It’s also a nice easy thing to mark up and I have a good production line going 🙂

I still haven’t absolutely finalised the colour of the front sashing for this quilt, but I have time to think about that. I’m quite liking the idea of a pale beige/cream, but am also debating using one of the brighter pale blues, as I don’t want the blocks to blend into the sashing too much.

This is going to be a nice easy quilt to assemble: three rows with a 6-square and 4-square panel in each, so only two medium-long seams and no very long ones.

Right, time to go and cut more backing squares.

Signed, Tealed & Delivered #2: fabric update

Please call off the search!

I’ve located the perfect airmail stripe at Hawthorne Threads in the US, for a reasonable price and even more reasonable postage.

Grateful thanks to everyone who offered to look and send me something, I really appreciate it, especially those of you who’d have to send it a long way 🙂

There has been a brilliant response to the call to action for this quilt. We now have just the following blocks left for which we don’t yet have a maker committed:

• 9 paper pieced envelope blocks
• 4 appliqué postcard blocks

If necessary, I can make these up myself, but if anyone out there is debating whether they have time to help or not, you have a while to think about it, as I don’t plan to start assembling till September.

Now for some other news. Katy Cameron of The Littlest Thistle had created a lovely paper pieced envelope block for an Easter post on her blog in April. It was too small to use here, but she has very kindly resized it for us to use for ST&D. If you are making one of the paper pieced envelope blocks and would like to use it, please let me know, together with an email address if I don’t already have one for you, and I’ll send you the pdfs.  A link to the relevant blog post can be found here, so you can see what the block looks like. I’m so grateful to Katy for saving me the trouble of drawing one up myself!

And finally, I’ve just heard from Ovarian Cancer Australia that TWX has arrived safely and they’re absolutely delighted with it.

Well done, you lot!

TWX 15: Tealed with a Kiss completed

It’s done, and on its way.

I decided to make the binding narrow, because I love how it looks, but it does add a whole level of extra difficulty to hand-stitching the binding down because there’s a lot less slack. I probably won’t make the binding so narrow another time. Somewhere between ‘normal’ and this skinny, which was 2 inch wide binding strips instead of 2½ inch.

Of course, the minute I wanted to photograph it outside, the rain came down, so it’s been photographed inside on the design wall. Sorry… it does make everything a bit duller.

Here’s the label, and all you lovely kind people who contributed a block (or several!)  will find your names there if you click on the image and enlarge it. Thank you all again for your wonderful, beautiful blocks and for contributing your time and fabric to this most important cause. I couldn’t have done it without you, and I hope you will continue to join in with our collaborative quilts in the future.

I’ve been mulling over the next OCA quilt off the production line. This won’t be starting for about 6 months, but I wanted to put the idea out there so anyone who wants to contribute has some time to think about what they want to do. It’s going to be called ‘Signed, Tealed and Delivered’, and it’s going to have a postal theme. My idea is that the blocks will still finish at 12½ inches square, but they will feature the front and back of a fabric postcard on a teal background. I’m visualising appliqué, but it could be pieced. The front can depict anything you like (patterned fabric, paper pieced image, machine embroidery, whatever takes your fancy), and the back should be cream fabric, laid out to look like a postcard, with a stamp, a fictitious address, a message and your signature, either embroidered, printed, or using an indelible marker. I’m thinking all the stamps should be teal, and the postcard fronts should feature teal in some way. Closer to the time we start this quilt, I’ll produce an example to show what I’m thinking.

What do you think? Do you have a better idea for executing this title? As always, I welcome suggestions and input, but will ultimately go with whatever I think works best 🙂