Hand Quilting

Where have I been you may wonder?

Well, remember these above? That became this below

I decided I wanted to have a go at hand quilting baptist fans on this scrappy repro log cabin in order to keep this quilt as traditional as possible.

I used these washable fine tipped markers and some circle templates to mark the rows of fans

...........as I didn't trust my skills at doing these freehand

Loving the look of these fans & the texture they create

Almost done......

Ta dah, all finished!

 and washed (the marker washed out perfectly)

 Look at all the texture, love it.

Here it is in all it's glory, this quilt finished at single bed/generous lap size, which was big enough for my first big hand quilting project.

Small Quilts

In between bouts of hand quilting I've managed to keep up with the Small Quilt Talk group monthly challenges set by Kathy Tracy:

April's challenge - Contrary wife block

May's challenge was a beautiful Sweet Pea pattern that Kathy designed and published the free pattern on her website here

..........and my interpretation of June's challenge, Flowerpot applique from her book, Remembering Adelia. A bit different to the original pattern, I admit I got just a little carried away doing my own thing here! lol

Here we have a possible layout of how I'm planning on joining these together "Quilt as You Go" method to make one large quilt. As I've mentioned before these little quilts are very good practice for improving my machine piecing and hand quilting. Odd orphan and play blocks are being used as fillers.

Hopefully it won't be so long before my next post, in the meantime, keep on stitching :)