Foks and Friends - a finished quilt

It took considerably less effort to finish this quilt than what the Olympic athletes had to come up with over the past two weeks. All it took was some time that I managed to find over the past weekend.

I don't want to uh and ah again about voile as I am sure it will bore you to tears by now but it really was such a pleasure again to work with this fabric despite the banana curve issue earlier when combining it with tana lawn. The softness is just out of this world. Jude and a few others suggested to actually start piecing strips from the middle which is not something I thought about and will definitely try when I make another effort combining these materials.

For now 'Folks and Friends' is finished and is every bit as gorgeous as I hoped it would be.

I quilted mostly in straight lines but added a Serpentine stitch here and there. Unfortunately the Janome Horizon doesn't have a nice programmed Serpentine stitch but I programmed one myself with the help of a splendidly written guide that can be found here (will also write a separate post about this in the next days).

The back is a vintage flower print from Liberty's of London that I bought as a remnant  piece at Shaukat last year.

For the binding I used Anna-Maria Horner's pastry print in toast (also voile) and was delighted to see that the colour matched perfectly with the back fabric.

The quilt measures 51" x 65" and is the perfect sofa-cuddle-size. It was quilted with Gueterman Sulky in silver/grey (no 1328) which blends wonderfully with this colour mix.

Folks and Friends can be purchase in my on-line ship here.

Folks and friends and banana curves

Voile. I. Love. you.

Really there isn't much more to say to this. I made my deep blue sea quilt last year from my ever growing stash of voile and and loved it to bits. And every time I open my voile/tana lawn box and feel the fabric I simply don't want to sew with anything else anymore. The softness of the voile is out of this world and tops most silks in my humble opinion. But of course that isn't realistic so I just allow myself every now and then a trip into voile land which is a bit like a guilty pleasure.

So I dived head first into the joyous land of voile and stitched together another strip quilt (sorry if you are getting bored of them). This time I wanted to mix it up by including some Liberty tana tawn print and solid but that went disastrously wrong.

When sewing a strip quilt top you need to hold on to the strips while sewing quite tightly, meaning when you are sewing together two strips you should hold the strips between your fingers to ensure they are fed evenly thought the machine while at the same time pulling slightly to the left so you are not creating a banana shaped curve. I am normally fairly aware of this having done two strip quilt before but with this one nothing worked. I had the worst banana shaped top you can imagine and my seam ripper had a whale of a time......

I wasn't quite sure what happened so started all over again but this time checked every couple of strips and found I only had the problem when I paired voile with tana lawn and no matter how well I held on to the strips while sewing the end result was still a curve rather than a straight line.

So in the end I binned all the tana lawn strips and stuck to just voile which worked a treat.

The prints used in this quilt top are a mixture of 'Little Folks', 'Innocent Crush', 'Loulouthi' and 'Prince Charming' which is why I am calling it 'Folks and Friends'

With all the Olympic watching going on there is little time to sew over the weekend but hopefully a few hours quilting will fit in somewhere. I fear my eyes are taking on a TV sized square shape soon.

What a great day team GB had yesterday and finally my home country Germany is picking up some medals too.

One buttery soft quilt is finished

My latest quilt is finished.

I started it right after I finished the 'Very Berry' quilt as I was longing for something light to glide through my fingers after the mountains of fabric I had handled for some time. 'Deep Blue Sea' (I think this name is a bit more suitable than notions of butter) is entirely made of cotton voile which has the most incredibly soft feel to it.
The design was led by the colours I had in my stash. I wanted to stay in the turquoise/ blue range of the wonderful lines of Anna Maria Horner's 'Lou Lou Thi' and Tula Pink's 'Prince Charming'. I also added a bit of  the 'Little Folks' line from Anna Maria Horner.

I cut strips of about 38 inches in different width for this quilt and simply build up until I reached a pleasant layout. In the end the length came to about 46 inches. 

The back of the quilt is kept somewhat indulgently in Anna Maria Horner's 'Clipping Forest' also from the 'Lou Lou Thi' range.

The binding is from Tula Pink's 'Prince Charming' quilt.

I machine quilted straight lines in Guerterman Sulky 30 in colour 1328 which is silvery grey, almost ice grey actually and very shiny. This colours has fast become one of my favourite quilting colours as it works well with almost anything. I also added a few hand quilted lines in various colours with Perle thread no 8 which adds a lovely contrast.

The softness of cotton voile makes it a little bit tricky to sew and baste as it tends to slip and slide easily. The  strips were nonetheless easy to sew together but it would be a bit more tricky if I had chosen smaller pieces are a more complex design. Basting this quilt was also a little bit challenging as the voile did not stick to any tape I had in the house. Again the small size was advantageous and I managed to get the back smooth in the end but I can see that one would be better of basting with two people if the quilt was bigger.

I literally can't stop myself stroking this quilt and I am sure there will be many more coming in this range.

The quilt can be found in my Etsy Shop for purchase. Sold