Quilts from the Vault

I've finally had time to look through the images from the photo shoot. I handed over the bridal outfit tonight, so I have time to post here.

These are three of the quilts we use on the bed. Although I am thinking about retiring two of them. The first one is called 'Flame On'. I made it before I had seen any bargello quilts, so I am pretty pleased with coming up with the same idea. It was strip pieced and then the strips shuffled. I didn't think of offsetting the seams thought. It would have been easier and I think more flamey. Still we live and learn. I also didn't know how to bind a quilt, so this one was done with satin ribbon, put on with a binding foot. It has done fine so it wasn't a big deal. It is quilted in invisible thread as I wasn't sure about quilting.

The second one was made as a black quilt no colour. It meets the spec, just. I made it on the overlocker because I thought it would be quicker (it was) but when you strip piece then cut the strips apart it weakens the overlocking considerably. This can be seen by the holes in the quilt. Again I hadn't worked out the quilting, so it is very minimal, and the binding is cotton tape. These are the two quilts that I think need to retire. To do that I need to replace them. I have plans for a new 'Flame On' but I haven't decided on a replacement for 'Monochrome'.

I knew 'Star Of Scotland' is a big quilt. It fits a king size bed, but not quilt frames at shows. However having seen the huge studio we were going to work in I had thought the quilt would fit. If it just touches the floor it just misses the ceiling lights. Still it is by far the best picture I've managed to get of it. All the fabrics in this quilt came from a trip to Edinburgh. I had gone there for a Linux conference and decided to see if I could buy any fabric. Bear in mind that I hadn't found my local quilt shop yet. I found three good shops and made full use of them. I knew I wanted to make a quilt with a rainbow on it, but I hated green. So I came up with this rainbow without green. I love it, but if I was going to do it again I would use all the colours.

This quilt is quilted in metallic silver thread, and I had a great idea for the design. I wanted to accentuate the spiral effect, so I thought I would quilt a spiral. It wasn't easy to draft an appropriate spiral, but quilting it was a real pain. I didn't think I could free motion it (I still don't think I could) so I had to rotate the whole of the quilt several times to quilt the spiral. I did get the effect I was looking for in the end. The edge is finished with prairie points. I would have put more on, but having run out of fabric I was kinda stuck with what I had. It has been much loved and seems to be dealing well with it.