Fabulous Oakshott cottons

 

 Remember these gorgeous Oakshott cottons? I blogged about them back here and here,

Well I finally got my act together to complete this project this year. I had made a dozen or so 18.5" blocks of the 30 required when my trusty little electric Brother machine broke down.

  

The only way I was going to get this finished by my friends birthday in early October was to use my 1929 Singer 66K treadle machine which I acquired this July & hadn't quite mastered the art of treadling yet......... that soon changed!

The blocks are constructed individually quilt as you go method (I used Hobbs 80/20 fusible batting for this project) here's a quick photo record of how I did this. 

I would start with a simple pieced background using a couple of colours or some circle units made up of drunkards path blocks and add some straight line quilting to the background.  

The green section below

Next I would play around with placement of odd scraps/offcuts & folded 2"strips 

A bit more background quilting added here

more folded strips are added, careful placement of these secures the rectangle scraps added on top when the strips are stitched down

these are then pressed over & stitched in place

this vintage Singer machine really does stitch beautifully!

Sewing curves for the Drunkards Path blocks on the electric machine was easy following this great video tutorial I found on you tube, however this technique didn't work on the treadle, believe me I tried.......you would need 3 hands!

After some practice  with scrap fabric, I mastered curves on the treadle: the secret? use lots of pins!

.......and before long, I was motoring away and was gradually running out of floor space to lay out these large blocks

Finally enough were made to complete the quilt. The blocks were joined together using my usual quilt as you go method (see labels on side for a link) with plain black sashing to try and add a little control to all this colour

 I have to mention here that all the credit for the inspiration of this quilt goes to Marianne of The Quilting Edge blog who very kindly gave permission to use her quilt as inspiration Thank you Marianne :)

and the leftovers?

Well I just couldn't let these go to waste now could I ? They were cut into squares & framed with a very pale grey (Kona shadow)

and over a couple of weekends, a lap size top was created

all with the treadle!

I have loved working with these gorgeous fabrics, Oakshott cottons have such vibrant colour & shimmer, can't wait to work with them again.

Time for an update

Just don't know where the time goes these days & can't believe it's been so long since I last posted something here.......but I haven't been completely idle!

The remainder of 2013 was busy sewing wise completing an order of baby quilts and tactile taggies for  the shop at Durrell.

Throughout 2013 I had been making quite a few Antique rose blocks by EPP which would be an ideal Christmas present for someone I know who loves polka dots

 These blocks are such fun to make & great for using up all sorts of scraps

It was a bit of a mad rush to get this quilt top completed & quilted in time. I opted for big stitch hand quilting with Pearl 8 cotton

........and chose to stick with hexagons for the border quilting

I just managed to complete it on time as the last stitch of the binding was made on 23rd December!

2014 so far .........

Remember this time last year I was up to my eyes in making Easy Street, which was a mystery quilt designed by Bonnie Hunter, well this top was chosen as a 60th birthday present for a special person & needed to be quilted asap

For this one I decided to hand quilt in concentric circles radiating from the centre of each main block & filled the gaps in between with concentric squares

I quite like how this one turned out, even though the patchwork design is quite busy with lots of piecing, the hand quilting still shows up well

I now have a new project on the go for 2014......it involves hexagons & guess what EPP!