Monday 24 September 2012

Granny squares are go

I put the top for my granny squares quilt together last weekend, and put the backing together and basted it at the same time.  I really wanted to do a quilting pattern that would bring the sashing and borders together so that they appear to be a single solid piece of fabric, while making the granny squares really stand out.  Time for some free-motion quilting.

Free-motion quilting

I had done a bit of free-motion quilting practice on scrap sandwiches before, with limited success.  This was my first "proper" FMQ project and I was quite nervous to start.  The quilting is definitely not perfect, but once I got my sewing machine set up on the dining room table and my quilting (aka light weight gardening) gloves on, it went quite well.  The fact that I used white thread on white fabric helps hide the wonky bits.
Free-motion quilting

I used a large meander type pattern to fill in the negative space but didn't do any quilting on the coloured parts of the quilt (that is why there are still basting pins there).  I will stitch these in the ditch to give the quilt a bit more structural integrity.  I never realised how quick FMQ would be - it only took me a couple of hours to do the whole quilt.  I expect that the straight-line quilting will take me at least as long.

Free-motion quilting

This is the backing fabric - I wanted to use something bright and cheerful that generally went with the fabrics on the front, but that wouldn't show through in the white negative space (for example, I have found that when backing a light coloured quilt with bright red backing fabric, the colour can make it look a bit pink on the front).  This is a large rose print fabric from Lecien's Flower Sugar range.

Cat on a quilt

It has the Ivy seal of approval.

3 comments:

Amira@littlemushroomcap said...

O that is such a sweet granny quilt.. Great choice of fabric...

heart of charnwood said...

What a beautiful quilt, it looks really fresh and girly, and you FMQ'ing looks fab- glad to know someone else uses lightweight gardening gloves like me too!! Coming over from Lily Quilts small blog meet. Ange x

Cindy said...

Very, very nice quilt. I just love the color combination. How nice to have Ivy's approval. I have a Tom and Jerry that would say the same thing.