One last finish for the year

Finished with a whole two days in hand!  The builders have left things nice and tidy over the Christmas break but the inside of the house is not what you would call picturesque so once again I braved the drizzle to stick this on the line.  It's a challenging business, since everything is kind of cock-eyed, as you can see from this unedited photo.

There is no slope in the garden - just in the washing line.  Just out of shot is a long length of drainpipe, with two pegs stuck on the top edge, which is serving as a prop for the line.  

At least things look a bit better once I crop out the wonky background!

Working up close on the quilting I had lost track of the big picture with this one, but now that it is done and I can stand back a bit, I am really happy with how it has turned out.  I can absolutely see how it relates to my starting point of maps of the back-to-backs in the centre of Birmingham in the 19th century.  

This was started at the beginning of August 2018 in response to an AHIQ challenge and I finished the piecing on December 5th.  I think maybe other quilts jumped the queue, because that seems quite a long time ago.  Anyway, I got it into a hoop in August this year and finished it first thing this morning.  In fact, I got up early specifically to stitch the last foot or so of binding.  That seems like a long time, I know, but because I mostly have two quilts on the go at the moment and both of them are now done, I think it still works out at somewhere between two and three months per quilt, which feels pretty fast to me.  

This was made out of a lot of shirts (the very darkest blue here is one of the nicest shirts I have ever used, I think) with bits from stash and a few very old Oakshott cottons in the mix.  Wadding is organic cotton and I used perle thread from stash.  I am used to cutting it fine with my fabric but in this case I nearly ran out of suitable thread.  There is one corner where everything is quilted in either white or a dark green, because that is all I had left.    

I am particularly pleased with the back for this.  The centre is made from an old tablecloth which depicts historic buildings of Tasmania.  I was experimenting with using things that I wouldn't want to cut up for a front and tablecloths have rather taken my fancy.  Not big enough to save me much piecing, but somehow pleasing nonetheless.

Finished size is about 65" wide by 80" long.

No better way to see out a year than with a last minute finish. 

Wishing you all a very happy and healthy 2022.

Finally, a finish

In fact, I have another quilt coming hot on the heels of this, which I am hoping to complete before year end, but for now I am going to pause and enjoy this finish. 

This was a quilt which began life as an attempt to use up a handful of little butterfly blocks I made with shirt fabrics and floral scraps in April 2017.  It's not like me to start something and not finish, so I think maybe they came from a phase when I thought I might do the Rainbow Scrap Challenge or something similar.  They sat in a box for a while but in the middle of July 2019 out they came again, with the idea that I could combine them with some pretty florals - literally butterflies in a garden.  Hah!  What I remember is that my early attempts produced some very unimpressive examples of visual mush.  Eventually, though I came up with this loose version of a Trip Around the World and things started to click into place.  

I like that this is off-centre (there's a thing) and that I have disrupted the pattern enough to keep myself entertained but not so much that you can't see what it is.  I love some of the fabrics in this, including the red birds and the dark blue floral that create the clearest lines

but also the blue pansy shirt and some of the more extravagant florals.

Here's the back.

I began this in September 2019 and finished the piecing on November 14th the same year.  I started quilting it some time this summer, but for some reason failed to make a note of exactly when.  I finished it on December 8th.

It is made mostly from shirting, and even most of the florals are shirt, but the dark blue and red bird fabrics are organic quilting cottons.  It has organic cotton batting and was quilted with perle no. 8, from stash.  

Closing time

I'm putting a pin in this and calling it done.  It is a little smaller than I had thought I was aiming for, and I did have fancy ideas of what to add next, but there came a moment when I looked at it and decided I liked it well enough as it was.

I have added runs of this striped fabric...

In the middle I made two long strips and joined them with one of my shinier reds, like this.

On the edges I kept it simpler.  I had to resort to the line again, though sadly the garden is not as pretty as last time I did this and the sun is so low in the sky that it skews my colours, but it is what it is.

This will be my last serious piecing this year, though I might tinker with some scraps if I get the chance.  However I have one quilt being bound, another I am hoping to finish before year end and a new one all nicely basted and ready for the hoop, so I will still be around and posting.