Tuesday 31 July 2012

Quilting in colour!

 Hello again, this is an all sorts of things post.....some of those quilting bits that are more about the simple fun of making them!

Sometimes I get a real yen to just work with colours, the brighter the better!
That's how this 'pillow' quilt came about, I'd got all these gorgeous, fun
materials in my stash and they just needed to come bursting out.
Each little pocket is stitched together by hand and in this quilt I used natural sheep 'fluff' to fill them with.  I then laid all the little squares out on the floor and switched them around until I'd mixed the colours up as best I could.
Then came the 'fun' of stitching each little pillow to its neighbour on the machine. First making strips, then stitching the strips together....it was no fun when all that weight accumulated!!
I then backed the quilt - in bright yellow, what else! and tied the layers together at each of the junction points.....was I glad to get to the end of that job!!


Not a great photo but I think it shows how lovely and textural this
sort of quilting is - it does make for a heavy quilt though.
This one now gets used as a bright and cosy play rug by my little nephew!


Now don't laugh!
Why am I showing you a huge jar of marbles?
This lovely jar took pride of place on the counter of the museum at Reeth where I spent many happy hours as guest Craftswoman last year....
ok, so what about the jar and what has it to do with quilting?
Well, it actually inspired me to create a cushion using the 'suffolk puff' patchwork!


I call it my 'marble' cushion - and once again I got to use all those lovely bright bits of fabric!
I had many lovely memories of playing marbles in the school playground, as we did back then, while I stitched this.....oh, how I used to covet those extra special, huge marbles!!!



 This next cushion doesn't have a huge amount of quilting stitches on it, it was more about the motif I'd crocheted and placed centre front but I did like the patchwork binding I'd made using up those tiny scraps that you get sent so that you can buy material mail order.
I still keep the ideal of not throwing any scrap away!  
(Does mean my material cupboard is groaning though!)


Back to the museum last year for the last piece in this section.
Upstairs was this lovely old rocking crib, a little narrow I thought, the babies would definately have to be swaddled to fit in there! but this little quilt is quite special to me as it was the quilt that got me back on track with my quilting life once again.  I'd had a break of over two years because personal strife caused a creative black hole!!

This little quilt called 'Nursery steps' was my new little steps back into the world of stitching.
Thank goodness!!  :-)
I hadn't realised how much I'd missed it!



Thanks for looking in,  take care.
Ash.