Spiral Strips Quilt.

I'm so pleased to have finished this quilt at long last, it's been in the making since January 2012. The design is  "Spiral Strips" from Jelly Roll Quilts: The perfect guide to making the most of the latest strip rolls, by Pam and Nicky Lintott. The fabric is Heirloom by Joel Dewberry. The Jelly roll consisted of fewer strips than that used in the book so I had to add some of my own fabrics.

 I did lines and lines of straight line quilting which seemed like they were never going to end. There were loads of ends to bury as there were numerous starts and stops as rather than just sew end to end I started from the middle square and quilted each quadrant individually.

As you can see I quilted a flower in the centre square but it was quite a struggle with all those seams so it was the first and last of the squares to get a flower.

 The back is also a Joel Dewberry design but I can't remember what it's called. I love the binding which is Bike Path by Alison Glass, I bought it a while ago with no particular purpose in mind and was thrilled that it went so well with this quilt.

I'm glad you can't see me whilst I was writing this post as there has been a lot of shouting and cheering as  the English men have just beaten the Aussies to the Gold medal in the swimming relay in the Commonwealth Games!! Well done to the women too who won the silver medal.

Summer Garden quilt.

Many years ago, not long after I started quilting, I made my Mum and Dad a small wall hanging. It now looks rather tired and dated so I thought it was time I made them a new one.

 I used the quilt "Garden Party" from the book " Making Quilts"  by Kathy Doughty of Material Obsession as inspiration and scaled down the size dramatically.   The original quilt is made up of a background representing the sky, the green bushy level and murky garden-bed layer.
For my background I used a colour wash method which was popular around the time I started quilting.

 I quilted the background with wavy lines using an aurifil  50 weight thread in light grey. I then applied flowers made from Dresden plates.

I had fun making the flowers with my new wedge rule, I can see more Dresdens in my future. I also enjoyed fussy cutting the fabrics.

This flower was machine applied, I left the points loose to add some texture.

It was a fun quilt to make and I quite fancy making a larger one at some point........after I've finished some other projects first of course.