Thursday, October 28, 2010

endulge me if you will.............

as these quilts have been about 18 months in the making.  After falling in love with this quilt I became determined to make a quilt for each of my girls in a similar fashion.

I decided to go with pink and green blocks for miss A and yellow and purple blocks for Miss B, based on their favourite colours at the time. 

All inspired I rushed out to my local fabric warehouse and bought up any and every bit of quilting fabric in said colours, with little or no thought put into the choices I was making.  I even bought the batting.

 
I set about making my first blocks........................and then I discovered via the wonderful world of blogging, designer fabrics.

Suddenly I hated all the fabric I had bought.  I completely lost enthusiasm for the project. 
It all languished in my tiny sewing room, taking up valuable space for more than 12 months.  Every now and again I would pull some fabric out and make afew more squares, because I couldn't bare the idea of never really finishing the quilts.

Then afew months ago I read about Mel sending a quilt to Suzanne to be quilted. 

Light bulbs went off in my head!!!!!  I know Suzanne, I thought to myself.  We both meet up at the Craftroom from time to time.
I contacted Suzanne to see if she would be interested in quilting my quilts on her long-arm machine- YES, she was! 
That was all the inspiration I needed to f.i.n.a.l.l.y. get on with it and get the quilts done.  Truth be told, it was not only the fabrics I didn't like, it was the thought of quilting two single bed size quilts on my domestic machine.
After laying out the blocks the way I originally planned (pink/green and yellow/purple - don't worry I'm cringing right along with you) I decided it would look much, much better if I made both the quilts using all four colours.  As the girls share a bedroom this would also give the room more harmony.

 
A week and a half later (I know incredible or what after so much procrastinating) I had both the quilt tops finished. 
I decided to use some store bought bed sheets for the backing for a couple of reasons.  Firstly to save time and secondly to save money.  Worked well on both counts. 
I know this wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea, but seeing as though the fabrics on the front were cheap and nasty (let's be honest here) I didn't see the point in going all out on the backing.

After a few emails back and forth between Suzanne and I, I settled on an over-all design called Butterfly Garden for the quilting.  I dropped the quilts over to Suzanne, and a week later she had them both finished!  I was soo soo excited when I went to pick them up. 

I was totally overwhelmed with how beautiful they looked once they had been quilted. 
I cannot fault her work or professionalism.  Job very well done!  Thank you so much Suzanne. 

I decided to make pieced binding, using up all the left over scraps. 
In the 18 months which passed since I started these quilts Miss A has decided her favourite colours are now pink and yellow, and Miss B's are purple and pink. 
Lucky I mixed the blocks all together then.  Phew! 

I machine stitched the bindings on and hey presto, suddenly the quilts were - DONE. 

Miss A and Miss B are truly rapt with their quilts.
And you know what, so am I.

10 comments:

  1. Wow Fran, they look great finished. I love the binding! Thank you so much for the wonderful comments on my quilting - it was so much fun to do. I am so glad your girls love the quilts - they turned out fantastic.

    ReplyDelete
  2. These are GORGEOUS ... I think quilting is a dark art and I've yet to have a go ... these have come up so well ... I think it was inspired to get the quilting bit outsourced. Hope you are well ... sorry it's been a while!!!xx

    ReplyDelete
  3. Fran they look great! must be so, so nice to finish them off though! What's the next project?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Wonderful quilts, Fran - I enjoyed the story behind them too. Gives me a bit of inspiration to complete the quilt I started a long time ago and stopped for the same reason, too. Cheap and nasty isn't always that nasty! :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Fantastic Fran, they look stunning!! I need to make my girls one each, so inspired!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Oooh, I can totally relate on the procrastination, but the finished quilts are fantastic! They look beautiful together in the room too.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Hello Fran

    The quilts are beautiful loove the colours.
    Lucky Girls!
    LOVE PEACE enJOY
    Julie
    x

    ReplyDelete
  8. They are friggin stunning! No wonder they took you so long - look at all the detail!
    I love them :)

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts, you've just made my day!