Hello weekend! More than halfway through February already, and today actually felt as though Spring might not be too far away.
It is definitely lighter now for longer in the late afternoon and there are snowdrops and primroses beginning to flower. The garden beckons, it needs a good tidy up, so that may be this weekend's task.
On the sewing front, I do have a finish to share, as promised, though I actually completed it a couple of weeks ago and have been very behind with posting. I feel it is especially worthy of Finish it up Friday to which I am linking, because it is a table runner made entirely from leftovers.
Many years ago I made a large quilt from Kaffe Fassett reds and an Oakshott plain shot cotton. I salivate just thinking about this quilt as the colours are intense, but stupidly I have forgotten to photograph it: I will do so tomorrow and edit it into this post. [Finally got the photos and you can see them in this post]
As the construction was very simple, with stitch and flip corners and I am mean about throwing away fabric, particularly such delicious fabric, I made bonus HSTs. I had so many of these I decided to incorporate a pieced border into the main quilt, which I love - but I still had a bag of HSTs and other scraps at the end which I could not bring myself to throw away.
One of my 2017 resolutions has been to deal with such odds and ends, so I decided to make something new from old: I pressed and trimmed and stitched, and made the centre panel. But I still had odd sized scraps left and, to be honest, the table runner wasn't much bigger than a table mat. I couldn't face making more HSTs and anyway the remaining scraps were a little too small.
Necessity being the mother of invention I decided to make a (subtly) contrasting border of nine-patches - who doesn't love a nine-patch?
So here is the finished piece: it measures a diminutive 18" x 29"; HSTs finish 1 1/2" and nine-patches are 3" finished. It is backed with a dusky purple peppered cotton and bound with a darker burgundy Oakshott, both from stash.
Quilted in a rusty red, top and bobbin, partly because I couldn't find a good purple to match the backing, and decided to embrace the problem: the gently contrasting thread shows off the geometric texture pleasingly - just ditch stitching with a bit of cross hatching in the borders.
Please don't be too critical of the accuracy of the construction: these HSTs were made a long time ago and I didn't trim in those days. So the piecing, and hence the ditch quilting, isn't quite as spot on as I would hope to make it nowadays. Still, it's done and that annoying little plastic bag is no longer lurking:that's a result!
One other thing: I had an outing on Thursday with two young people I am teaching to quilt. We went to Worthing, to Eclectic Maker, for layer cakes to make their first quilts. More on this in a later post, but I thought a moody shot of them with their shopping bags by the seaside would record the event. The weather did pick up shortly after this and we had fish and chips sitting in the sunshine.
Back to work - have a great weekend!
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