Skip to main content

Unloved [essential sampler quilt]

I have a number of "long-term" sampler quilts. By "long-term" I mean either slowly in progress or totally ignored. Over the next few weeks I want to blog about these projects - I'll start the week with a review of the project, so I can see where I'm up to and what is left to do. Then hopefully I can spend some time during the week working on that project. At the end of the week I'll then look at where I've got to and what my future plans for the project are.

I'm going to start off today with my oldest such project. Back in January 2011 I started a series of patchwork classes to make the Nikki Tinkler Sampler quilt. I first blogged about it here - you can see my first four blocks. As I continued the project I focussed my fabric choices considerably and all of the four blocks in the original post have been remade since then!

The quilt is 25 patchwork blocks, each different, introducing lots of different techniques. This was perfect for me as I was totally new to patchwork at the time. Although the book is template heavy, our local quilt shop offered alternative techniques, including rotary cutting and foundation piecing, including my favourite block, the mariners compass.

One of my favourite techniques from the quilt was bias applique. I enjoyed it so much I bought the mini iron and bias makers and I definitely have a bias applique celtic knot quilt on my bucket list.

The book suggested QAYG for these blocks and I decided to do this - I was the only one. I also chose to hand quilt the blocks. And inevitably I fell behind.

In October 2011 I pieced the centre 9 blocks together. And I've barely touched it since. All of the 25 blocks are pieced. I know if I was doing it now, they would be pieced far better - and without using templates, but this is part of my quilting journey!

I have 8 more blocks which require quilting, or more quilting, and then I need to piece the QAYG blocks. It's not pieced the way I would piece it if I was doing it now, but there we go... The blocks are all different sizes, so the borders are all different sizes. I think once I've pieced it, if it looks awful, I'll do some free motion quilting or perle embroidery to distract from the joins... it depends on how enthusiastic I feel.

Pop back next week to see if I've made any progress!

Comments

Lin said…
You chose some great colours - looking forward to seeing this one finished as I love sampler quilts. xx
Love the colours! It will look great, just because of that. Never mind if the sewing isn't perfect. It will have the charm of an antique quilt. They are lots of times also not sewn together very "professional" !!!

Popular posts from this blog

365 Quilt Challenge 2016 [A finish]

I can't believe I've just typed that heading! When I made the block for January 1st 2016 I could not have imagined the journey this quilt would have taken me on. So make yourselves comfortable and grab a cup of tea, because this blog post may get lengthy! I'd seen the 365 Quilt Challenge on Facebook. I think every quilter on Facebook must have been aware of it. Loads of my friends had signed up and it kept popping up as a "Page you might like" thing. In the end, in November 2015, I joined the group, had a poke round. Decided it wasn't for me. One of the things that really put me off were the fabric requirements: you needed x amount of dark dark fabric, x amount of medium dark fabric, x amount of dark medium, medium, light medium, light, background.... I just couldn't get my head round those requirements. I'd looked at the mock ups on the wesbite and couldn't bring myself to pick a colour. I put it to the back of my mind. But I had obvious

Hidden Agenda [A Finish]

This is very possibly my favourite ever finish - I know I've said that in the past, but this one is going to be hard to beat. This time last year, I attended a day long lecture/workshop with Tula Pink and it was inspiring. Having not really loved her fabrics in the past (but loved her patterns), I suddenly saw them in a new light, linked with my 2018 new year's resolution to try more fussy cutting). Fast forward 8 months and I confess that my Tula stash has expanded quite a lot. I found some UK shops with older ranges of fabric, splurged on a few destashes and found the odd piece of her fabric already in my stash. The plan was always (and remains) to make a Smitten quilt, but I'm well aware that I have plenty of fabric to make other projects as well! So when I saw the Hidden Agenda quilt pattern by Angela Pingle, this fabric sprung instantly to mind.... and we all know I love a rainbow! And what could be better than rainbowfied Tula? I was ably assisted by my friend Ti

February Embroidery Along [A Finish]

I've really been enjoying my embroidery this year, after not doing very much last year. One of the challenges I set myself at the start of the year was to learn to colour tint my fabric before adding the embroidery - I love buying the pre-printed panels, but I'd like to do this myself as well. And the opportunity to learn this arose in February. Meg Hawkey of Crab Apple Hill Studio hosted a stitchalong to celebrate National Embroidery Month, and the first step was colour your fabric. I bought the pencils she advises,  the blending stumps, something called fabric extender and the pigma pen. And I gave it a go. My first attempt ended badly. Because the one thing I didn't buy was a new, clean paintbrush. So when I came to add the fabric extended, it went all bleary and muddy as, despite cleaning the paintbrush thoroughly, it obviously wasn't clean enough. It was unsalvageable so I started again, and I was so much happier with the results. The practice piece was, in

Labels

Show more

Archive

Show more