WIP Wednesday

This week I have made great progress with the 4th and final quilt in my SOMB series. (Shirt off my Back quilts that used fabric from recycled men's shirts from a challenge at an annual retreat I go to)

My last one I have called Not So Sombre Stars and featured the ninepatch in the centre using the shirt fabrics. All 4 of the quilts had these 9 patches in them.

I didn't get to start to put the blocks together till Friday or Saturday. I completed all the blocks by Sunday and completed the top on Monday. It went together pretty quickly as it was all chain piecing. 

The work wasn't without incident. I had a number of errors along the way and several times when I got to spend lots of one on one time with my unpicker

I sewed the flying geese uints to the wrong side

I sewed the flying geese to the flying geese

I sewed the square flying geese square units the wrong way around

I did this more than once 

I used the wrong colour corner squares... I made all the mistakes I could I reckon

I did get one finished correctly

 I even got 6 done

And then I had the whole quilt's worth done

The top has 25 star blocks in 5 rows of 5 with no sashing. I was hoping to get away with no borders but, foolishly posted a photo on twitter and asked for opinions and my twilter friends obliged and the universal consensus was for borders.

 Another challenge I have set myself is that all the fabric used in these quilts have to be recycled fabrics, fabrics that have been used for another purpose or vintage fabric, bought for another purpose many years ago and repurposed. So had to find the border fabric from within my stash. I had some red and white striped fabric that my mother-in-law had used as covers for beds that weren't made up, to protect them from dust. The stripes are very wide - 2.75". I cut the fabric so that the red stripe was full width but the white stripe was 1.5". It would have been good to have been able to cut the white stripe in half and then could have saved myself more cutting but the measurement was too tricky... too many decimal places. I am going to use the red for binding as well I think. Will see how it looks when I've quilted the top. I should probably have done some cutting and sewing and tricky stuff to get the white to go right around... or done corner stones or something but I haven't and so the white border doesn't go right around but... you get that.

Still working out what to do for the backing. I have decided to make it a gift for a friend who is currently in hospital waiting diagnosis for what may well turn out to be cancer. I have cut a heap of white and cream repurposed fabric into 6.5" squares which I will get friends and family to sign and then make it up decoratively in some way. He likes fishing and I have a length of fabric that has underwater scenes from the Great Barrier Reef. Will work that into it some how. Not sure where I inherited that fabric from. It counts as repurposed for my challenge in that it was probably bought originally to be curtaining. 

I didn't work on my Disappearing Into the Blue quilt at all this week as I didn't go up to Patchwork to sew today. I went up for morning tea and took some scones up with me to share but only stayed for an hour or so.

Linking up with WIP Wednesday at Freshly pieced