Another overdue blog post. Oops.
My first foray into mini-quilt making which didn't quite go as planned when it ended up being larger than intended.
This was a gift for a couple I know who were celebrating their 5th wedding anniversary, and the 10th anniversary of their meeting (which is terrifying as we were at university together, it can't have been that long ago!)
I didn't have a clue what to get them, as their interests diverge quite a bit from mine, but they both love cats, so I thought a wall hanging quilt with some personality would be a nice thing.
I chose the Kittens Quilt pattern from Elizabeth Hartman, because it was a reasonable sized block, and I might be planning to make myself a kitten quilt with some of the many fat quarters I have stashed :D
I wanted to give them some personality, so her block was done in purple with a bit of a gothy bow (not actually that goth, more pirate, still appropriate) and for his, I wanted to give him a bandana, which he always wears, but there were some issues in making it not look like a pair of knickers on his head, or a martial arts/tennis player headband. Eventually I said screw it and gave him a vaguely underwear looking bandana.
I made star blocks to fit in the other corners (originally I was going to do several smaller stars, but then I got fed up with fiddly things).
I sashed it all and then pondered the back. In the end, I didn't quite have enough black to do a full back, so I made some flying geese with the skull fabric and leftover coloured fabrics to stretch it out.
I put it all together, and then pondered quilting it. In the end, I stitched in the ditch around the various cats and stars, and the sashing lines. It wasn't brilliant, but I was fairly happy with it. I then bound it using a vaguely beige bias tape.
The couple were really happy with it, but I have a bunch of issues. I had to order two lots of the background fabric, and somehow despite it all being Kona Khaki, I ended up with two different shades. It is only slightly noticeable, but enough that it's annoying. I also wasn't anticipating quite such a beige tone as a khaki.
The binding also annoyed me, but it was the closest match I could find, and the alternative was using black, which looked really off against the pale top piece.
Definitely a learning experience, so much ironing, but the up side is that I now have a load of low volume fabrics leftover, many of which are super cute. I also learned how to do flying geese and got lots of practice doing fiddly corner matching.
Fabric from Plush Addict, The Village Haberdashery, Threads and Patches and The Fabric Fox.
Wadding from The Village Haberdashery (whose customer service continues to be amazing; package got lost in the post, the replaced it immediately and changed the address it was being sent to so I got it the next day)
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