Latest update...Underground Quilt

When looking through my stash of fabrics for the tea towel challenge over at 15 minutes of play blog I found that I had more than a little of vintage farics that had a 'tea' connection. Napkins, cloths, a tea dress! aprons...see above

I thought the the words " Brightest London is best reached by underground" on the original tea towel that would become the medallion ,were best seperated to reduce the amount of beige in the quilt. So I played with some background ideas.

after making some big 'made ' fabric I decided to slash them into strips rather than squares

and sandwich them within strips of seersucker...why not????

and then once again.
I haven't sewn the dog to the bottom of it...he can run off if he wishes!

These shapes reminded me of the escalator in the medallion tea towel image. Such fun!!

For cornerstones I used scraps left from the Kath Kidson cloth that had lovely images of Buckingham Palace, the London Eye and Big Ben and another scrap of the underground logo and just added fabric to make the right size. As you can see nothing is particularly measured, and certainly nothing square but immense fun and it holds lots of treasured fabrics. Definately a 'keeper' ...now to look for some backing. Its got to be an old tablecloth or a vintage sheet! Now...who's for a cuppa??

Another big THANK YOU to Victoria over at the 15 minutes of play blog for such a great challenge.

First Quilt of 2013

Here's the making of a quilt that I have completed as part of a challenge on the Bumblebeans / 15 minutes Play blog (it's a great blog - please pop over and have a look - it's a lot of fun) Victoris sent the challenge fabric out (all the way from New York) to a dozen or more people like mysef in order to try and make something lovely out of it. Sort of like a silk purse from a sow's ear....but I happen to really like this sow's ear!!

I might add that quite a few of the fabrics were not quilting cotton, lots were polycotton, especially the shirting, and I think the final border too. I love using a mixture of fabrics and also I couldn't find my rotary cutter over Christmas so alot are scissor cut or...torn.

Here we go!! I loved the challenge fabric , so cut a big square from it, retaining the roses. I had 2 fat quarters of zingy Michael Miller fabrics that I've been waiting for the right moment for....here cometh the HOUR . I auditioned many fabrics and shapes but loved the idea of the roses being the centre of a star.

Next I cut up lots of stripey shirt pieces to 'make' some lights to form a star and used very dark striped black and green to form the points....OH NO!! TOO dark

So i softened the points with made fabric from the photo below....

I added tarten to the left-over scraps of the challenge fabric

Now that's more pleasing to the eye. And YES if the Quilt Police are watching...it is a Wonky Star...a very wonky star

Next I added the second of the Michael Miller fabrics as a border together with random squares inserted of the first one and added some fussy cut cornerstones edged in the tarten. You'll note I'm constantly trying to get a couple of my favourite fabrics of the moment in...but it wasn't to be

Lastly, a bit more chequered shirt 'upcycled' fabric - emphasising the points of the star, with a little whimsical change of colour in the bottom right corner -  and a border of a red/blue cotton just waiting for a day like today.

I think that I'll put a scrappy light binding around it, with a hint of an inch of black here and there. But I've LOVED doing this ..THANK YOU Victoria, I love a challenge and this will make a great Linus Quilt for a little star child out there. Put together with love, with a 12" square from New York and pieced with the bonniest of scottish tarten!!

102_1164, a photo by julie wyer on Flickr.