Trapezium quilt

Another finished project. My Trapezium quilt.

Things I am pleased with are:

1. it's my first attempt at quilt as you go and it went fairly smoothly. I liked that each square was a manageable size (15 inches which I cut down to 12.5 inches). It was also easy to sew the squares together despite the bulk. And of course the quilting itself was much easier.

2. I love the scrappy trapeziums and the straight line quilting. I quilted a quarter inch apart in matching Isacord thread.

3. I also love the quilted trapeziums. They are done an eigth of an inch apart in the Isacord thread. I'm going to use this on another quilt as you go project or if I feel more confident with manipulating the whole quilt through the machine I might try that way.

Not so pleasing:
1. I'm not sure I like the way the wadding and top lies. It looks better when the quilt is lying flat but hanging up it looks bunched.

2. I really dislike the back. With this QAYG method the backing is added at the end and as there were few places to quilt apart from in the ditch the backing is loose. That displeases me a lot.


Next time I would:

• make the square I'm working with less than 15 inches as it was a little wasteful
• quilt the backing at the same time as the front and work out a way to join them 

However all in all it is a good quilt and it was a great experience. It took me 27 hours and 30 minutes.

Valentine Quilted Coasters

A lovely quick project that has me in a romantic mood. I used spare charm squares and a stencil set with curvy hearts.

I glued the red heart to the cream square with a permanent spray glue however I don't think I'll use that for this type of project again. The glue is quite rigid when dry. It's good to experiment though. Next time I'll either use a less permanent glue or just pin the heart.

I then machine sewed the heart to the fabric square which has a smaller square (4.5 by 4.5 inches) of wadding pinned to the back. My very first attempt at machine applique and I really liked it. I usually hand applique and while I think that will always be my favourite I did enjoy seeing the machine stitches and I'm almost happy with the result. Next time I'll stay nearer the edge of the heart.

I finished it in the usual way I make coasters and used the red thread to do the border.

Blue hexagon placemats

I made a table funner from a set of blue fat quarters and gingham fabric.

Now I'm making matching placemats. I probably only have enough of the fat quarter fabric left to make two placemats which is worth noting for future projects. Especially as the runner is not particularly long. 

I'm sewing 1.5 inch hexagons and will have them arranged in a central panel with the gingham at each side and also as backing.