Monday 17 March 2014

Thin Cut Marmalade



At the start of the year, I decided to try to only sew from stash and was then faced with having to make not one, but two quilts for a friend’s new baby and the newly promoted “big sister”.

“Big sister” had moved to her own bedroom in preparation for the new arrival and had chosen a pink, green and white floral colour scheme when her room was redecorated.  Luckily I had plenty of FQs in ditsy florals that I could use and a small amount of a pinkish marbled solid. For the new arrival, I wanted use some of the charm squares I had in my stash along with a sunny yellow solid I picked up on holiday last year.

I used the Marmalade Squares (Two) quilt pattern from Moda as a starting point, but adapted the measurements to make a rectangular quilt that would make the best use of 60" wide fleece that I had for the backing. I reduced the amount of solid to fit my available fabric and I also simplified the pattern by using half charm squares in the narrow bands rather than a mix of squares and rectangles.


I backed both quilts with pink, starry fleece and quilted them with Aurifil 50 wt using a serpentine stitch in a grid pattern. I used a matching thread in the needle for each quilt and variegated pink in the bobbin for both quilts.


I think my favourite part of these quilts is the basket weave square in the top left corner. Since working out how to do partial seams, I love this method of adding a totally symetrical border (though if you look closely, the layouts on the two quilts are not the same).


Now these quilts are finished and delivered, I'll double check my measurements and then put the amendments to the original Moda pattern in my projects/tutorials section .

Update: My modifications to the original pattern are now available in the projects/tutorials section.

Thursday 6 March 2014

A year of blogging - giveaway winners

Well, without any further to-do, here are the winners of my blogging birthday giveaway. I used a very low tech method and a slightly bemused work colleague to do the draw.


The winner of the Liberty book is "ellinoora" and the winner of the fabrics is "Harrysmum". Congratulations to the two of you - please check your inboxes for an email from me.