A flock of geese - a finished quilt-

And at last I have a finished quilt to share with you. It's going to be a picture post with lots and lots of images. And here first of all the quilt in all its beauty.

You might recall that I used wool wadding for the first time for this quilt. I was really taken aback by how much loft this batting has compared to my usual cotton batting. I do like a relatively thick wadding and use Hobbs Heirloom which is roughly as thick as the Quilter Dream Select weight. The difference between the wool and cotton batting is that cotton has almost no loft and sort of feels more substantial.

Because of the higher loft I felt I could not quilt the quilt as dense as I might have done otherwise which was a little disappointing. I originally wanted to do vertical lines 1.5 in apart and then add horizontals along the seam lines but ended up only doing the vertical lines.

I also felt that although I basted this quilt very well that the quilt top and back moved more through quilting than anticipated. This wasn't a problem as such as I chosen the backing and wadding large enough  but it surprised me. Overall I had to slow down during quilting as my machine would otherwise slip a stitch which is also something I hadn't had before (if you disregard the time when I hadn't cleaned my machine....let's not talk about that).

I quilted with a beige 28w Aurifill thread as I often do. Aurifill or Guetermann Sulky are my two favourite threads.

My backing fabric is a text print from Carrie Bloomsten's 'Paint' collection which I thought works really well with this quilt. The front has a varying colour palette of bright and sedate colours and I chose both fabrics for each flying geese block to compliment each other which I hope gives the quilt a coherent design.

The binding is a dotty red/white fabric that contrasts well with the backing and also with the quilt front and really makes me smile.

The wool adding gives the quilt an entire different feel and drape. Folded up like in the image above it is obvious how much loft this quilt really has and at first I wasn't too happy with this and almost regretted my choice  but I am slowly getting around the softer drape and feel of the quilt and am sure that when the winter comes that I appreciate it even more.

And to close a few numbers and statistics:

• 240 geese blocks @ 3" x 6" finished size makes 720 pieces of fabric stitched together

• I used the "no waste" method where you make 4 geese blocks out of one square as described in this tutorial. I chose the squares rather larger than suggested though because I always square them off with a ruler and used a bloc-loc ruler this time which really works a treat

• I used a very large selection of K. Fassett shot cottons, mattress ticking, gingham, moda cross weave and M. Dubrawski hand printed fabric

And this is it for the next 2 months or so. I am taking a summer break enjoying a bit more my photography and other non-quilting activities and will be back in the autumn.

Have a good one !

A flock of geese - part three-

I don't mind basting a quilt. Sure it isn't the most stimulating of processes when making a quilt but it is a really important one and needs to be done right to have a good time quilting.

So I put on an audio book and get on with it. For my new 'flock of geese' quilt I used for the first time wool batting that I bought by the yard from 'Creative Grid' where I also buy my large cotton batting rolls. The woll wadding has much, much more loft than the cotten batting and I am interestd to see how this behaves during quilting.

But to make sure my quilt sandwitch isn't moving at all during quilting I secured it with over 400 pins. That is even for me a lot. One for each geese block makes 240 and one in each intersection which makes a pin every three inches. One hour later I was done and hopefully find some time and motivation this week in the evenings to get on with quilting.

A flock of geese -part two-

It's been a while since I updated on the progress of my new quilt. The geese came a long fine until I had done 200 of them and only 40 were left to do.....and those took me about 2 weeks to make. To be honest, they are not tedious or difficult to make but it sort of wears you out eventually.

But I am really pleased how they have turned out. Over the weekend I played around with a few combination and finally settled on most of them flying in one direction with a few "wild ones" in between.

And there is also one entire row breaking ranks and flying into the other direction!

All I need to do now is join them and get basting. I am thinking of using a wool batting for a change for extra warmth.

Lotta fly away - spreading its wings

... only its gonna stay put because I keep it !

So here it is; all done and actually already in use on my bed. Just to recap briefly,  this quilt is made of the new line 'Echo' by Lotta Jansdotter in combination with Kona Snow and various other Kona solids (see details in this post here). 'Echo'  was bought at Seamstar here in the UK and the Kona solids are from Riverfabrics here in the UK and from existing stash I had.

The quilt measures 70 x 76 inches (1.78 x 1.92 m) and the front is made of 136 flying gees units ( 7 x 3.5 inches) from Kona snow and patterned fabric plus a border of units in coordinating solids that are 5 x 2.5 inches).
I used two different methods to make the flying geese units and both work well. I made the larger units with my flying geese ruler. With this method there is no need to cut off dog ears at the corners but it can waste fabric. However one can minimize this by doing some calculations before measuring the fabrics strips. For the border units I used the "No Waste method for making flying geese units" by patchpieces. This is an excellent method that wastes absolutely no fabric (as title says....), the unit dimensions are easy to calculate for any size you wish but you end up with dog ears.
The reason why I used two methods was just because I wanted to try them and see how they compare. I think I am slightly in favour of the no waste method as I hate having to many fabric offcuts.

The back is pieced using the same solids that were used for the border on the front plus 'Echo' leftovers and a generous amount of Kona Coal for background.

 

I quilted in zickzack lines below and above the stitch lines to emphasis the flying gees pattern. I used two different Guetermann Sulky colours. On the front my 1071 and on the back my favourite steel grey colour 1328.

  

As always I am particularly excited about my choice of binding .It is a stripy number in rich pink and orange from the Taza collection of Dena Design bought at my local quilt shop Tiki.

 

And for good measure a few roll-ups...

 

 

Lotta fly away - an update

I have had a very productive weekend and made great progress on my 'Lotta fly away' and the 'Countdown-to-x-mas' quilt. But first an update on Lotta and a big, big thank to all you lovely readers for your encouraging comments here on my blog and on Flickr. From the comments I gather there is a lot of love for the 'Echo' collection but also a lot of headache or hesitation when it comes to finding the right pattern.

It's true, it isn't an easy collection to choose a pattern for and I'm afraid I can't tell you why I chose the flying geese pattern other then when I saw the collection the first time, my first thought was Love and my second flying geese. The collection has a good mixture of bold and finer prints and I think this actually does make it suitable for a variety of patterns but I would say the collection benefits from patterns that showcase (at least i part) larger pieces of fabric. Another pattern that comes to mind for this collection are Diamonds, just rows and rows of Diamonds.

I pieced the entire top and am now turning my thoughts to the back. I added a border of flying geese to the top which is made of solids that reflects most of the colours used in the collection.
The fabric in this image is largely from my stock. From top to bottom, the fabrics are Kona Curry, Kona Navy, Freespirit Gold (though I am not a 100 % sure) , Kona Everglade and Kona Candy Pink.

The fabric in next image was purchased from Riverfabrics and shows Kona Black (not used in this quilt though), Kona Snow and Kona Coal. Apart from the Freespirit and Kona Curry all of the above are also available from Janette at Riverfabrics in case you are looking for coordinating solids for this collection.

Lotta fly away - not quite fluttering

Midweek and I thought I post a little update on my sewing endeavours from the weekend and the last days.

It was a short weekend but I still managed to sew all the flying geese units (only one of you guessed right actually !) for my new quilt 'Lotta fly away', laid them out and started piecing the units together. And when I wasn't doing that I was hand quilting my 'Countdown to x-mas' quilt which proves a lot more work than I had anticipated but I am still enjoying the hand quilting and that can only be a good thing.

I am also eagerly awaiting the arrival of my pillow from the Pillow fight Swap which should arrive in the next days. My cushion was already very warmy received by the lovely Renee. The best thing about this swap was that I got to make the pillow for the same person that in the last swap round made a mini quilt for me !

Enjoy the rest of your week or if you aren't then start looking forward to the not so distant weekend.

P.S. Dont' forget the Riverfabrics giveaway is still ongoing until the end of the week.

Lotta fly away and other updates

I  wanted to thank everybody who so kindly helped with quilting suggestions of my  'Countdown to x-mas' quilt. I pondered each and every one for days on end until I had a revelation last Sunday while running (and I would not have had that without your help !). I finished the machine quilting part yesterday and moved on to some hand quilting which I really enjoy. Since I have my Janome Horzion I have done very little hand quilting but I guess this has more to do with the fact that before I had the Horizon I hand quilted each and every one of my very large quilts.  I think I was done with hand quilting for a while and I am rather delighted that I find pleasure in it again. But the big reveal of the finished quilt and the quilting pattern will have to wait a little while.

I hand quilt normally in front of the TV which means I need a project in parallel for the machine (as there is only so much TV watching one can do....). What better to do then to start a new quilt (what else really ..). I have been itching to cut into my stash of 'Echo' by Lotta Jansdotter.

Can you guess what it's gonna  be ?

Of now to another lap of Sunday morning running and then back to the sewing machine...bliss.