Sunday, 3 April 2011

One "Single Girl Quilt" done!

Yes people it is done. Weeks of joyful stitching, a few days of not so joyful quilting and the quilt is finished. And I love it, it really has grown on me over the past weeks and truly has become MY quilt and that means this one isn't going to be a present or sold or anything, this one is MINE. And how fitting it is, a single girl quilt for a single girl (well......not quite girl anymore but we let that go for the moment).




Before I say anything more a huge Thank You goes to everybody in the Single Girl support group who helped with advice and comments. Girls (I think it were only girls this time) you rock ! And an even bigger THANK YOU goes to Nova, Katy and Megan for organising this quilt along. I have met so many people trough this and am truly grateful for having had the chance to participate.

So here is the run-down of the technicalities and my experience with the pattern. I have written about this quilt on numerous occasion over the past weeks( start here and then work forward..........) so I am not going to go into the nooks and crannies about the process any more.


Finished Size: 1,65 m 1,87 m (65x 74 inches) which is what I call Sofa size


Fabric: Klona (not Kona) for the rings. This is from a bundle called Hurricane and is sold by                Backstitch here in the UK. I used Kona in taube (bought at Simply Solids) for the background and Echino Madrigal in Brown for the quilt back.The fabric for the back is perfect as it it cut wide so I only needed to add a strip of Kona in chocolate brown to the sides.





Batting: Quilters Dream Select weight bought locally at Tikki

Binding: I decided to keep the colour of the binding in the spirit of the rings and just made one long strip from leftovers. This frames the quilt nicely on both sides and reflects the colours of the rings. 




Quilting: Quilted in variegated Guetermann Sulky 30 thread  in colour 4036 (also bought at Tikki). This has a wonderful sheen to it that works really well with the Kona taube and also with the Echino as it sort of blends in. Quilting took about 15 hours and 700 m of thread I think, I stopped counting at some point. I quilted in wonky straight lines on my Janome machine. The only reason why I said in the beginning "not so joyful" quilting is because it just gets boring after a while and it was doing my back in.






Experience and top tips: I found the whole process from the cutting out of the template to sewing the top enjoyable and I had only a few problems. If you ever attempt this quilt then you need to pay attention like a hawk to how you layout the individual pieces of the rings. I managed to sew piece "I" of every single ring upside down to its neighbour. Luckily it was on the side but still that did cost time and nerves.
 I added about one inch to the outside curves as I wanted a little bit of a bigger gap between the individual rings than the pattern suggest. I personally think the rings are to close together in the original pattern. Adding a bit more makes the sewing also easier (tip from the lovely Nova).
Do keep close attention to ironing as it helps to flatten the rings but I didn't have much problems with this anyway, however I know some people had.

And off the next project. I am working on the Monochromatic Dresdens with Lilly's QAL and also started to work on a new pattern and quilt that is called "Springtime" (more in the next days).....

10 comments:

  1. That's a really lovely quilt - love the colours.

    Psssst...it's not 'nooks and grannies' but 'nooks and crannies'!!!

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  2. Love, love, love your single girl. I'm attempting the hand quilting, and ohmygod its driving me nuts. I really like your wobbly line quilting! Machine is looking really good to me right now... Awesome work though, well done!

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  3. Well done! I'm impressed that you're tackling all those curves and so much prettiness. The Echino looks just stunning as a backing fabric :)

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  4. This one is on my to do list, too. I might be coming to your for help because the curves and templates scare me!

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  5. This is a great quilt! I like how it looks on the sofa with a pillow, perfect for a nap!

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  6. @Caroline - you should definitely do it. I agree w Judith, it is actually quite pleasant to do and not really at all scarey. Very much ;-)

    Judith I think your finsished quilt looks awesome. I shall keep persevering with mine just as soon as I find it!

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  7. Thanks for the quick wrap-up. I am in the Single Girl group but have yet to start, so I really appreciate the pointers (especially about the extra width on the outside piece - I want my rings spaced out more as well). Your quilt is beautiful :)

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  8. I'm here from seeing your picture on flickr this morning. This quilt is stunning! I'm going to read the rest of your posts. I'm doing nine rings of Hope Valley and three rings of solids. Whew! The solids were tricky because it was so easy to have the wrong side up instead of the right side. Again, BEAUTIFUL!!

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  9. This quilt is just dreamy!!! I would DEFINITELY sport it on my bed!!!

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  10. Love this! Great color and I like the straight line quilting.

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Thank you for your comments! I love reading them and will answer every question you have on my projects. But I have a very busy daytime job and am therefore not able to thank each and every comment. Please don't be offended if I won't reply.