Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Quilting crazy - Sneak Peak of Sophie's quilt



It's no secret that I am relatively new to crafting, and really very new to quilting. I'm in the middle of making two quilts at the moment and I think I can officially declare that I am a total convert to this fabulous and wonderful new world.

I spent Sunday evening crawling around my playroom floor basting this quilt and went to bed stiff and sore after it. Undeterred, I sat down this evening in front of the machine and spent about 2 and a half hours quilting. Now my neck is sore, my eyes are tired and my shoulders ache from pulling the quilt around and around all evening. But I am so so SO happy!!! I just can't wait to get home from work tomorrow night and quilt some more :-) I got well over half of it quilted tonight so hopefully another evening will finish it. Everyone who told me quilting was addictive was so right :-)

I love the process and end result of quilting more than I ever could have imagined. And I've found coming up with my own quilt designs (however simple) & choosing my fabrics to make the design work completely inspirational - I have about a hundred ideas lined up in my head waiting to be made up in new quilts!


This is my "Sophie's Dreams" quilt, made for a little girl called Sophie. Its filled with flowers, animals, birds, dolls, bright colours, stripes, dots, beautiful patterns and lots of inspiration for a little lady. It's not a princess-y pink kind of quilt (though I'm partial to those too!) but is still beautiully girlie. Sizewise, its somewhere between a cot size and a twin bed size, so its the biggest thing I've made so far. It's made up of large 7.5" squares, randomly placed and after considering lots and lots of quilting methods, I finally decided to quilt it in slightly wonky straight lines. I like the imperfectness of the wonky lines - totally straight would not fit with the character of the quilt. They're quilting up very nicely indeed  and I'm glad I spent the time and effort basting it very carefully and closely because its paying off now in terms of ease of quilting.  I'm using an ivory cream natural cotton thread and love the effect. I'm also loving my quilting extension table which arrived a few weeks ago, it makes the whole process so much easier!


The back is a cream floral cotton print that I found in my local fabric store and works well on the back of this busy quilt. I have appliqued Sophie's name in the centre of the quilt back, using Bondaweb and then stitching around the edges for security. This will give the edges a slightly frayed effect as it is washed and used which is intentional and again, fits with the character of the quilt.


 
I'm looking forward to getting this quilt finished in the coming days. For the moment, I'll keep dreaming up ideas for the next quilt I'm going to do!

3 comments:

Tena Sanders said...

Beautiful quilt and work! You give me the 'fever' to start again. Thanks for sharing.

patchworkdelights said...

This looks great sarah! Impressive size. Would love an extension for my m/c but I think I might have to replace the one I have at some point.

Mary said...

Great quilting! The lines look wonderful! Sophie is going to be so excited! I didn't know an extension table could help that much with quilting