This is just a short post this morning. I thought I'd pop in and show you the completed embroidery which I teased you with a few snippets of earlier in the year. This past weekend we were in the UK for a wedding and I had made a small embroidered gift for the bride and groom. As they have now opened their gift and, I promised to show you the finished embroidery that I had made for them, here it is....
Most of the background is appliqué with machine finishing but some of the details (the leaves on the tree to the left, the grasses at the front and the bees) have been hand stitched. I framed it in a box frame and, I was really pleased with it and now I know they like it too!
In my last post I gave you an update on the nautical quilt I was making using a pattern from the lovely book by Lynette Anderson called 'Nautical Quilts' and I had shown you the pieced central panel with the stitchery and appliqué that I had completed to that point.
So, what have I managed to do since then? Well, the next stage was to add some more appliqué and stitchery to the empty sections of the central panel (across the top and to the right hand side). These had to be added after the panel was pieced together as some of the appliqué extended over two blocks of pieced fabric.
Then a narrow border was added to the central panel, followed by a pieced border using strips of the same fabrics that had been used for the appliqués in the centre.
Next, I layered and basted the quilt into a sandwich ready for quilting. I have to admit that since I have improved my FMQ skills the quilting now holds a great deal of excitement for me in the quilt-making process. I love deciding how I am going to quilt the quilt top. For this particular quilt it seemed to make sense to break it down into sections and decide how to quilt each of those sections.
I started with the middle section (I like to start in the middle and quilt out) with the sailing boat. I quilted around the the sun and then a spiral pattern in the top half of the block like the wind in the sails. I also outlined the boat and sails and then quilted some wavy lines like the sea in the bottom part of the block.
Then, I was away for the weekend at my niece's wedding (which was really fabulous!) but meant I couldn't work on the quilt. However, as I still hadn't decided how the rest was going to be quilted, I took a print of a photo I had taken of the top and doodled on it while I was flying to the UK to try out how I might quilt it. This really, really helped and, when I returned I was ready to get back in my sewing room and get quilting.
I quilted a loopy loop pattern in the block around the bunting at the top.
I outlined the string of fish and gave them a pebbly background which extended down to where the seagull is. To make the background around the seagull look a little different I added a spiral here and there too.
Next, I echoed around the compass and outlined the directional points.
The lifebuoy was surrounded with pebbles and filled with straight lines.
The final block to quilt was the four fishes in the bottom, left corner. These I quilted very simply. Firstly, outlining the shape of each fish and then, with my walking foot around each of the squares inside and outside of the line of running stitches.
Finally, it was onto the border which I chose to quilt in a sort of chequerboard pattern. I marked a grid and quilted densely in some which left the others free to puff up. I transitioned from one side to another with a big spiral in each of the corner squares.
The final step was to bind it using a binding tape which I made using a tape maker. I then glue basted this in place one side at a time and stitched through from top to bottom in one go.
This is the first time I have tried this method of binding (which I read about in the book 'Quilts Made Modern' by Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr) and, although a little fiddly, was a lot quicker than the usual method of sewing to the front, turning to the back and then stitching.
Et voilà one finished quilt.
Sorry if the photos are a bit fuzzy in places..... I use my phone to take them and I'm not much of a photographer!!
Thank you for visiting 😃
Today I thought I would show you the progress I have made with the nautical quilt that I had started cutting the fabrics for in my last post.
This quilt is from the lovely book 'Nautical Quilts' by Lynette Anderson.
I've been trying to work on it for at least a small amount of time each day and, I have been making good progress. I started by piecing together the little squares of fabric you can see in the photograph above. These form small joining sections between the larger appliqué blocks which form the central part of the 'All Aboard Quilt' from the book.
Next I worked on the bottom left section which was four little appliqué fishes.
To the right of these was the next block that I worked on which was an appliquéd seagull. I joined it to the fishes block using some of the little joining squares which I had pieced together.
Next came an embroidered compass block and another appliqué block this time of a lifebuoy.
They were also joined with a pieced section of little squares. Next was my favourite block (so far) to stitch.... the sail boat. It was lots of fun to put this together and add all the little embroidered details.
Once this block was finished I was able to piece together the rest of the central panel of the quilt. That's as far as I am for the moment but, I have some appliqué pieces all cut out ready to be added across the top and down the right-hand side. This is such a fun quilt to make and I'm hoping to get to work on it some more over the weekend.
Hope you all have a lovely weekend!
