For Christmas 2008, I made my MIL a queen size bed quilt. Which is a bit excessive for your every day run of the mill yuletide gift, I grant you, but it was part Christmas gift, part birthday-gift-owed-to-you-from-your-70th birthday (6 years ago now!!!) so I combined the two occasions and made a whopper.
[side note: the reason I didn't just finish the damned quilt that I had 90% done on Catherine's birthday way back then and give it to her (well, beyond the here-unwrap-your-gift-happy-birthday-now-give-it-back-so-I-can-finish-it-please gifting) because I am so annoyed at my quilting on it - it ended up being a real rush to get it finished in time - and I still didn't quite manage that - and so now I can't bear to give it away with quilting that I am so unhappy with, and can't bring myself to frog all that quilting either. The first quilt was an origami folded fabric flower quilt -based on those in the book Fantastic Fabric Folding by Rebecca Wat. I can't find a decent pic of one similar online, so I'll see if I can buck up the courage to take a photo of the actual thing and share here. Maybe if I take the pic from afar it will obscure the crappy quilting. Or motivate me to get the darn thing done once and for all! And erm yes, making an entire new quilt from scratch is probably more time intensive than just unpicking and redoing the quilting on the lap quilt, but seriously, what business do you have introducing logic here???
side note over. for now]
Anywaayyyyyy. So I bought the fabric online, paid ridiculous wads of cash to have it and some batting shipped to the Seychelles (I didn't have enough left in my stash), made the top and back, basted it, and managed an entire 4 minutes of quilting before my sewing machine destroyed itself rather spectacularly (I was worried the quilt would ever more smell of burning plastic and mechanical doom). And being the last-minute Lucy that I am, this all happened about 10 days before we left for our trip back to NZ for Christmas. Insert several choice words in a selection of languages. Luckily for me, we had electricity and our internet connection was working that day, and I managed to find a lovely quilter back in Godzone who, after a few email conversations, happily agreed to do the quilting for me as soon as I sent it to her, and even put a rush on it knowing that it was intended as a Christmas present! So off to the couriers the quilt and I went. And long story short(er), the finished quilt arrived on my MIL's doorstep on the 3rd of January! Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to see it during that trip, so was keen to see how the whole thing had turned out, when we stayed with Catherine on our way down to Wellington recently. I was thrilled to see the results of the quilting, as well as to see how the quilt looked in situ (and hopefully being used!) I'm thrilled with how it turned out - this is the first quilt of mine that I've quilted by someone else, and I was pleasantly surprised...and I'm thinking this may be the way to go for future big big quilts...much easier than fighting with 4 metres of batting and my lovely wee domestic machine!
I managed a few very rushed shots just as we were about to leave...though really I should have been paying attention to the light and the fact that D standing in a wrought iron structure was less than ideal...I think at the time I was distracted by Cole and Immy paying a disconcerting amount of attention to discussing amongst themselves whether the fishpond might in fact be deep enough for them to have a swim in. Anyway, here it is.
Top and backing in Anna Maria Horner's Garden Party fabrics, cotton batting, and quilting by Stitchworks of Omokoroa, as I mentioned above. The pattern is one I made up, though inspired by the many turning twenty finished quilts I have seen about the blogosphere. I don't have the pattern or book it comes from (I think it was a book?) and I can't remember dimensions or border sizes etc that I used, but can hunt them down if anyone is interested.
Good grief, what an awful lot of waffling on for a quilt!
***are you still reading? Seriously? Oh well done, you leg end you! And in recognition of your disturbing lack of better things to do with your time than read this drivel diligence in staying on topic you can be the first to know: since this is my 100th post, I'm having a little giveaway - all details in the next post!
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