It's been pretty ridiculous, to tell the truth - still wearing winter boots, socks, jackets and gloves when cycling right up to July. It's not normally like that here but we keep having Arctic winds blast through - brrr! According to the forecasts, it's just here for a week so I jumped at the opportunity to spend time at friends' cottage in the warm weather and of course do some sewing while we were at it.
We worked on a baby quilt for friends, who had their baby last November (so yes, we're a little behind the game). It's an adorable mix of different textured fabrics, including cotton, flannel and chenille and some Heat n'Bond style applique. We spent about a day and a half hand stitching the applique down and enjoyed some fruit smoothies and Pimms with strawberries in the process - yum!
Hand stitching done, I sat outside with the machine and joined all of the blocks together, then added the borders. I'd not sewn with chenille previously and I admit, it was a bit tricky. It had a tendency to slip around so extra pins were useful to keep it in place. At other times, the walking foot seemed to have trouble feeding it along and it would need a little push to move forward, which I discovered could also cause the thread to break - annoying. But I persevered and it came together easily enough, despite all that.
Then we sandwiched the layers using fabric glue - I don't think I'll ever go back to basting and pinning ever again! I got to work doing all of the straight quilting and my friend Ingrid will later do all of the meander and echo quilting. I stitched in the ditch between the blocks and borders, stitched a square around the chenille blocks and one inch diagonal stripes over the nine patch blocks. Then in the borders we made a zig zag pattern.
Not too shabby for four days of work! We should hopefully finally be able to pass along this quilt by later this month. Stay tuned for photos from that event.
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