Aqua Batik Quilt - Finished!!

I'm ahead of my 2010 target already, I achieved my first finish of the year yesterday. In all honesty, it would have been finished in 2009 if I hadn't run out of thread, but I'm counting it for this year :o). This quilt was made from a batik jelly roll by Fabric Freedom, bought from Doughty's at Malvern about 3 years ago, with the pale background batik coming from somewhere in the US. I used a pattern called "State of Grace" from the book "Strip Clubbing" by Cozy Quilt Designs, one of the original jelly roll books. Just brace yourself if you enter the book name in Google!



The backing fabric is another batik (bought from the people who are always at the bottom of the marque at Malvern, can't quite remember their name at the moment) and the wadding is Quilters Dream Green. This is a recycled polyester wadding made from old pop bottles, but feels and handles exactly the same as their regular polyester wadding. Pop bottles and wadding are made from the same chemical compound, so in theory you could melt your wadding and make pop bottles, but I probably won't bother with that :o). I've used two different threads for the quilting, a dark King Tut (De Nile 927 - 1 reel) and a light Robison Anton (Pastel Variegated - 1½ reels). The quilt was sandwiched using 505 spray, my favourite method for putting quilts together, but probably not ideal for a quilt that's going to take a year to finish :o).



It was started in April 2008 (another advantage of blogging, you can see exactly how long a project has taken!), the top was finished in October that year, and I have been gradually quilting it since the beginning of last year, with major breaks for thinking time. On the plus side, my free machine quilting has come on leaps and bounds, and I have to say I'm very pleased with how it's turned out, particularly the quilting on the borders.




The heart motif is one that Philippa Naylor gave us during a workshop at the Festival of Quilts in 2008 and the floral border motif is adapted from a pantograph, with some extra bits added so that it would go round the corners. The heart motif is centred on three design elements on the front of the quilt, the dark spiral, the pinwheel in the middle of the light spiral and the small tringles linking the dark and light spirals. It's a perfect fit, I couldn't have designed it better myself!




I used Golden Threads quilting paper, rather than marking the top itself, I'm a big fan of this stuff as well. I drew the border motifs out in full in pencil, but I used the sewing machine to make several of the heart motifs at once, sewing with an unthreaded needle.

This quilt is now on the bed in our bedroom. It doesn't really go with the decor, but it's had a big thumbs up from OH, so we're enjoying it for the time being, and it does brighten up a dull north facing room.

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