I named "Celebrating Jean" as I created it for my mother-in-law to celebrate her 60th Birthday.
It started with finding out her favourite colour, orange... and this image from Pinterest. And into my sketch book the planning began:
Here the quilt is being mapped out, chosing fabrics, cutting fabrics and forming the layout. Then pinning each row together with a note, including: Row Number, Direction to sew and direction to iron so each of the row edges would butt up against each other nicely.
Between the 14th March when I first started to design this quilt, and the 10th April when I got to put the layers together, ready for quilting... I had my other Quilt to finish. So this little treasure was just sitting patiently, all cut and ready to go, in a bag for a few weeks... but once I was ready, it came together pretty quickly.
I stitched-in-the-ditch of all seams, then kantha stitched each diagonal in both directions to create a lovely cross hatch design. I really love the simplicity and raw naivety of hand quilting.
I finished the binding just in time, the night before Nath and the kids were travelling to Adelaide with it packed away nicely in the suitcase.
Joshua loves it because orange happens to be his favourite colour too!
My fabric labels I designed, arrived just in time too:
It's a very simple quilt compared to my last one, which was entirely block constructing... this one is simply blocking a variety of complementary fabrics together. But I quite like it... it's simple and effective in design. It came together quite quickly and I enjoyed doing all the hand quilting.
I quilted at Mikaela's swim training, at book club meetings and during the evenings after the kiddies were in bed. Before too long it was done... I even took a few day's off to start another project, which I'll share with you shortly - my most ambitious one yet !!
Love out.
Bx
