Signed, Sealed, Delivered
Almost a year ago I started out on an epic journey, the journey of my first commission!!(whhaaatt?? someone wants me to make them a quilt, for money??) I was rather apprehensive as up until now I had only ever made things that I wanted to, blocks or patterns that appealed to me in colours and fabrics that called to me. Most of them end up as presents for other people, but still if you're going to spend hours on something its got to spark your interest right?
Suddenly to be faced with a very specific criteria put me in a flat spin, it wasn't a style I would naturally be drawn to, nor was the colour palette something I had worked in before but you know me, I love a good challenge!! You can read about the start of my African Adventure here.
Having made a sprinting start with lots of ideas and creativity flowing it got to around August/September time and I totally stalled, it was so sunny and bright, love was blooming (swoon Mr Keeble) and I just had no motivation to sit in doors sewing bits of fabric in brown and muted shades together. The more I knew I had to do it and was running out of time, the less I seemed able to motivate myself to do. I got a bit tangled up with it all, tried out a few experimental blocks that really really didn't work, so with my motivation and now my confidence totally down the pan I stopped altogether. I had a month off where I didn't even look at it, and then started doing lots of research into all the other projects I had seen being done by the wonderful people I follow on Instagram (you can find me on there as thatssewkerry) and that 1 month suddenly became 3 months - more on that later. Now it's January and I've got less than 7 weeks to get this monster done and dusted....panic mode!!
Having spent a huge amount of time researching all sorts of blocks, designs, quilts you name it really over the last few months I went back through it all and found this particular block called 'Capital T'.
Originally 6" I scaled it up to be the 18" I needed and set to work finishing off the African Star. You can find out how I made this block by having a look at my new Tutorials button at the top of the home page or by clicking here.
Having spent a huge amount of time researching all sorts of blocks, designs, quilts you name it really over the last few months I went back through it all and found this particular block called 'Capital T'.
Originally 6" I scaled it up to be the 18" I needed and set to work finishing off the African Star. You can find out how I made this block by having a look at my new Tutorials button at the top of the home page or by clicking here.
Originally I made 4 of these blocks, 1 cream, 1 tan and 2 red with the intention of having them alternating along the bottom row, rather irritatingly 4 turned out to be to wide and would have resulted in me having to cut them in a funny position in order to get them to fit and as such the repeat pattern would have been lost, but of course 3 wasn't wide enough to complete the row ggrrrrrr!!! So back to the old faithful 2.5" strips to fill up the extra space, not a total loss as it reflects the top row where a similar totally planned design feature had happened!!
Due to the size of these blocks there were several large areas of empty space so I tried to be more adventurous with my quilting, mostly just echoing the shapes being quilted such as squares and triangles but still and adventurous step for me.
One of my New years quilting resolutions was/is to be braver when quilting my blocks and to try to add in more quilting opportunities to the blocks or quilts I am choosing to make. It's a baby step I'll grant you but I'm proud all the same.
The next stage is slightly less exciting but with all the blocks now done they had to be joined together, I opted for my old favourite quilt-as-you-go method, although I do now have the machine space and the table space to attempt whole quilting projects it's still not something I feel brave enough to attempt. Plus I really like the idea of working on smaller bits and then suddenly having a huge quilt to put together, there's a real sense of achievement in that somewhere for me - usually mixed in with a whole lot of madness.
Blocks become rows and then rows become quilts, soon there after there is a flourish of furious hand stitching to get all the back bindings attached and all those raw edges covered, all the while a lot of swearing and stabbed fingers is going on - I've never been able to get on with a thimble! Finally arriving at that very satisfying moment when that last stitch goes in and months and months of work turn into this......
Thank you to everyone who has offered me there thoughts, opinions, ideas and just general support throughout this epic adventure, it really means very much to me and I don't think I would have believed in myself enough to get it done without you all. Lets start the next one......
Happy Quilting
Kerry xx
