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Stitchintime's Entry

Iminei

Stitchintime's Entry
« on: October 03, 2017, 09:30:22 AM »
Here are the photos of my quilt for TSP Bear. It is the first mini quilt I have made and I can see why they are such popular items for a quick project.

When I saw that TSP Bear wanted a quilt my first thought was to reach for my copy of Barbara Brackman’s Big Book of Blocks (not its official title) and make a single block mini quilt. But then TSP Bear being a fussy little blighter a discerning bear of specific requirements decided he would like his quilt to be ~8x10” which meant a single square block wouldn’t be suitable. Instead I reached for a pencil and graph paper and after an evening of doodling I had the beginnings of a design ready to be finalised using more technical (and colourful) means on my iPad.

Working at this scale, I decided that a thin fabric would give more of a drape and softness than regular quilting cottons and so I raided my scrap bag of Liberty tana lawn for appropriately sized and coloured scraps. A few choice words were said when I realised my design was more suitable to working in centimetres than inches, but freezer paper and an “add a quarter” ruler came to the rescue enabling me to cut metric-sized shapes with a quarter inch seam. Piecing the quilt went smoothly, though there was one tricky square that required two partial seams – another planning failure on my part.

I had decided to use a piece of Liberty lawn for the back (Hera, the classic design of the peacock feather), but I was unsure what to use as wadding. I made up some test quilt sandwiches using scraps of 80/20 wadding, but the end result was too stiff for such small quilt and I couldn’t see them tucking around TSP Bear to keep him warm and toasty. Instead I tried a piece of microfleece left over from backing my last two Project Linus quilts and found this gave the softness and warmth befitting of a bear.

When it came to the quilting, I was tempted to reach for the walking foot, but felt TSP Bear deserved better and so the FMQ foot was attached to my machine. A dark grey thread was chosen for the quilting as it blended with most of the fabrics, but contrasted with a few of the darker pieces. Quilting was kept fairly sparse so as not to add any extra stiffness and the design is probably best described as a “meandering square” to reflect the shapes of the piecing. A narrow double fold binding, again in Liberty lawn, was applied and hand stitched to the back, making the finished quilt ~8.5 x 10.5”.

Well that is the story of the quilt, so here is the summary of the quilt:

Fabric: Liberty tana lawn
Wadding: Microfleece
Quilting: Free motion using Aurifil 50 wt
Finished size: ~8.5 x 10.5”

If TSP Bear decides that this is the quilt for him, I hope it is not the start of him developing expensive tastes for fine fabrics.

Best wishes

StitchInTime

Fabrics -



Construction -



Detail -



Finished Quilt -

The Imperfect Perfectionist sews again