Having (semi) mastered the cape I wanted to challenge myself a bit more. On my trip to Eastleigh Sewing Centre I purchased a jelly roll to make a quilt for myself. This one was going to be bigger, more grown up and involve a bit more thought and planning.
Instead of sewing the strips in a long line, like I had with my nieces quilt, I cut them into smaller strips and made squares of 3 strips. Once I had all of the squares I spent some time working out how I wanted them to sit together in the quilt. Had I been a bit braver I would have thought about using boarders within the quilt, but I decided to just to do straight patchwork.
When I finished sewing the squares together, the quilt wasn't quite as big as I had wanted it. As a beginner, I am still getting my head around how much fabric I need for things, especially things that I am not following a pattern for. There are lots of good books and web articles out there to help with this though.
The finished quilt top was beautiful and I decided that I would put a thick edge around the outside in order to boost the size a bit. I had some cream fabric and some pink which I had used to create a few extra squares within the quilt, but I didn't have enough of either one to do the whole boarder, so I went with two sides pink and two in cream. I think it gives it a little something special.
As this was a bigger quilt, the quilting aspect of it was hard work. When you are quilting down the quilt, you end up having to roll up as you go and push the excess through the machine, in the gap to the right of the needle...which isn't very big. The cat also likes to "help" with my sewing, by sitting right in front of my machine 😃
I was more prepared to put some time into the edging of this quilt, I had learnt from my previous attempts and although there were still some mistakes, it looks a lot better. I even managed to get my head around how to do corners, which is harder than you might think!
My finished quilt is beautiful and I absolutely adore it. It fits the bed, but it is mainly for curling up under on the sofa with a cup of tea.
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