Slow Sewing: The Making of a Quilt

Hey! I made a quilt.
This has been a looooooong project. The joy of making this has been in the slowness of putting it together. I think if I had rushed it I would have been heartily sick of it by its completion. As it is as I have taken so long over it it has been a joy; completed in short bursts over a long period of time. How Long, you might be wondering? Well over a year!

This is the story of my quilt, and no it's not as long as it took to make.
When I went to my first #sewupnorth event in Leeds TWO years ago I won a couple of fat quarter packs in the raffle. These small pieces of quilting cotton were so smooth and the colours were just stunning I knew that I would have to use them somehow. I'm not a quilter so the thought of cutting and piecing the fabric, let alone quilting it filled me with dread. However, after the fabric had sat in my stash for 6 months I decided to give it a go.

I cut the fabric into wide strips and then stitched the strips together to create very long strips. Then I cut these into narrow strips using my rotary cutter and metal rule. Once cut, I rotated the strips, which meant unpicking a seam or two to create the stepped pattern you can see in my quilt. I sewed with a 6mm seam and pressed as I went along. Once I had completed the top I had a long rest until I could face quilting it.

I did not want to use polyester wadding for this quilt as I have been trying to cut down on waste and my use of plastics and the cotton batting was out of my price range. Instead, I used a couple of old flannel sheets for the wadding and the backing and binding fabric came from an old cotton duvet cover that had a rip on one side where it had become a little threadbare. The other side was fine, so this became my backing. I layered the backing, flannel sheets and quilt top and pinned together using safety pins. I know you can buy special safety pins for quilting, but I found the safety pins I had already were perfectly ok for the job. I rolled the quilt into the middle from the edges and secured the rolls with offcuts of flannel and pins. this gave me a 30cm wide strip to quilt. I gradually unrolled the quilt as I stitched it.

I decided to try free motion quilting and used my trusty Bernina 707 to do this. It's easy to drop the feed dogs on this machine and it has an extension table for the machine which provides a bit more support, as I was working with a large amount of fabric at a time I did most of the quilting at our monthly Crafternoon events as I had access to a larger table to support my work.

Unfortunately, I found it very tricky to keep my stitch length constant and even, but the overall effect is ok and the quilt feels nice and firm. This process has taken a long time and I've put this down for a couple of months before picking it up again. Last week at our Crafternoon session I finally finished the quilting.

During this week, I trimmed the edges of my quilt and cut 10cm wide strips to use for binding. Yesterday I sewed up the binding strips and stitched it to my quilt. Before beginning this I did a bit of research into how to mitre the corners, as on my last quilt this was unsatisfactory. There were loads of tutorials on Youtube and they all had basically the same method for stitching the top. Once I had stitched the binding to the top. I folded it under and finished the underside with tiny fell stitches. This took a couple of hours, but I find hand stitching quite relaxing and meditative (as long as I don't have to do too much of it).

Finally, I have a finished quilt and have saved a couple of flannel sheets and a duvet cover from landfill so I'm happy. Those of you who are expert quilt makers will be able to pick a boatload of mistakes with this. I don't care. It's been an achievement for me and because I've taken my time with it I have actually enjoyed it. It really is worth slowing down sometimes.

I made a quilt

I've always loved the beautiful soft quilts that I see at friends homes. I always fancied making my own. A couple of years ago I decided to get started. I cut and pieced scraps together from my sewing offcuts. The process of cutting out took ages, and by the time I'd pieced a handful of small square and rectangles into bigger squares and sewn about 40 of them together, I'd had enough.

I was sorting through my stash and found the bag with this in. There were just a few squares left to sew together, and since my physio said I could do a bit of sewing as it was good for keeping circulation going in my operated on side, I thought I'd give it a go. I stitched the remaining few squares together and pressed the patchwork. not a bad size, about 1m by 1.5m. I found some fabric that was suitable for the backing and bought the wadding from The Sewing Machine Guy (he has some beautiful fabrics in stock - check them out or visit if you're in Northumberland). Ellen from Ellen's of Ellington showed me how to true the sides, pin the layers together and a really simple way to quilt it all together - I just used straight lines! Then she showed me how to bind it - the edges look great, but I'm not really happy with the corners - I think my binding was a bit too thick to get a really neat finish here.

I know many quilt artists would be shocked by my piecing and overly simple quilting, however, this quilt has used up a good chunk of scrap fabric, so it's definitely recycled. The only thing purchased was the wadding, so it was also cheap (materials wise). And with the current cold spell in the UK. I have sat underneath this for the last week, keeping warm. even the kids think it's warm and snuggly.

I'm not sure I'll ever make one again,  I'm trying to find different ways to use up my waste fabrics and just use less generally, but if I find myself with a supply of good quality cotton offcuts - well who knows?

Crafternoon

A few years ago, I ran a few workshops from home, all sorts of creative stuff. I was wanting to do a few more, but workshops at home are tricky due to space.

So instead I talked to a few friends at my church and came up with the idea of a Crafternoon. We're running our first one later this month in Morpeth. I know this is not a new idea, but it will give those who like to create opportunity to meet and chat and of course there will be cake.

We hoping that this will be the first of many. Each month we hope to be able to offer a demonstration/ talk or workshop on a creative technique - covering all types of crafts, but it is primarily a group where people can bring what they are working on, chat and get to know others who enjoy doing some similar stuff.

In our first event we will be haing a get to know your sewing machine session; this will be run by myself and my friend, Kirsty, who used to be a pattern drafter and sample maker. We will also be on hand to offer advice about fitting and following a sewing pattern.

If you are in NE England and would like to join us, please come along.

What type of creative techniques would you like to try?