Playing in Sunshine

I finally got this quilted on the weekend and the label stitched on it today. I hope to post it off to its new home on Wednesday.

The pattern was Charlotte from Scrapitudequilts.com "Playing with Nine-Patches" one she offered free to her followers on facebook but which she now has for sale on her website.

Initially I was just sewing ninepatches using blocks from my 2.5" drawer of squares of that size. However I then decided that I would try have one block with yellow in it in each trio of blocks I sewed together.

 Some squares were all yellow but as I was getting low on them I allowed that any yellow would qualify. 

I didn't cut any blocks for the centre of this quilt - using just what I had in my drawer. I tried not to use any white or cream blocks, nor any black ones, at least not in the centre of the quilt. 

When I did the border I did use some of the black blocks. I did cut a few squares for the corner blocks on the border to get a bit of variety. By the time I got to there the selection was getting very limited and there were very few bright ones left. Now I have just some cream, white and a few black ones left!! I worked out that I used almost 1000 2.5" squares in the quilt.

I chose a tan kona solid for the background - a fabric that I had in my stash. I bought it  using a coupon I won in an online competition. It went well with the yellows in the quilt. I wanted a light for the background - more restful with the busyness of the scrappy ninepatches.

I got the quilt top together relatively quickly. I started it around 20th June and by the 1st July I had the centre of the quilt and the first yellow border on. It took me 2 weeks to get the next border on

And once that was on I got it pinned out, choosing a golden browny orange for the backing. And then I let it sit... and sit for a few weeks. Finally, having bought fabric whilst I was away during last week I was keen to get a big finish in to balance out my stash numbers... I am not kidding. I don't like going backwards with my stash usage. I was also going away for 10 days and I really wanted to get it done. I am planning on giving it to a friend who has had a tough time lately so needed to get it done.

So....finally late Saturday morning I got started. I had some new quilting tools, purchased from Massdrop.com that I was keen to try out including Supreme Slider, Little Magic Bobbin Genies, Quilt Halo and Machinger gloves. I haven't used any of these before, although I have used a slider of another brand. I chose to do an all over stipple.

I loved all the items and I am glad that I got to use them... but I had a really frustrating time of it. My sewing machine's tension was playing up. The sulky thread, a lovely variegated yellow I was using for the top thread kept snapping so I swapped it for the plain yellow Rassant that I had in the bobbin. I had cobbles at times and other times I had great patches of eyelashing. One time the slider shifted and I stitched it. Then another time a piece of fabric I had on the table stuck to the quilt and got stitched in. And then there was the broken needle. Oh and the full bobbin of thread that became cobbled and had to be carefully cut out to get it out. Then I realised that I was running low on thread. By this time the sewing shops in town were closed and so when I pulled out the cobbles I did so very carefully so I could wind up the top thread again and reuse it. I wound each piece onto its own bobbin (so there was less chance of knots etc). Later I had to carefully unwind the wrecked bobbin I'd cut out... In the end I wound the sulky thread onto bobbins and found that this worked better and didn't snap as often when I used it on the spooler. 

It was all very painful and the results weren't perfect but I got it done. I trimmed it down, made the binding from the same fabric as the backing and got it sewn on. I machined it to the back and then folded it over and machined it down again with a wavy stitch. I got it finished last night rather late and was delighted to get the stash report written (with that lovely 10.36m of fabric used)

This was the biggest quilt that I have quilted on my own domestic machine for a good while - I think that I had forgotten what a job it was to do. It was 200cm x 227cm (approx 80" x 90") It is a shame that I had so much hassle with it. It took away a lot of the joy I felt using my new gadgets which I am sure made the difficult job that much easier.