Bloggers' Quilt Festival: Almondesque

Following a cheeky comment how she unfortunately had all her children before I started making (baby) quilts, I decided to make this quilt for two of our closest friends as a homewarming gift. They had just moved into a Bauhaus inspired new home and because of their love of New England and Edward Hopper, blue stuck itself to my mind in terms of over-riding colour.

I had spent some time "researching" Bauhaus patterns, aka browsing Flickr and finally settled on this design. With pencil and paper, I calculated the size, different amounts of fabric etc. and then set about trying to find coordinating blues ... that resulted in quite the stash (and another project: "Helena the Great")



Despite my usual tendencies to not waste too much time ironing and cutting properly, I took great care with this project, probably also because I had the time, kicking it off during last year's retreat. And I am pleased to say that this care really paid off. The corners align well, making straight line quilting so much easier.


This is the result: I am really pleased. It was inspired by this photo on the left:

The quilt was very well received and a total surprise for my friends, taking pride of place on the lounge sofa and getting a lot of use.

Vital Stats:
105 * 185 cm, roughly
Kona Solids
Gütermann and Aurifil threads
Freudenberg 100% cotton wadding
lotsa fun to make! .... more

Another finish: Almondesque

Almondesque is done. And I am really pleased. It was inspired by this photo:

The quilt was very well received and a total surprise for my friends. They had thought that their boat had sailed in terms of receiving a quilt from me because they were done having babies before I had ramped up production enough for me to give quilts away to special small humans ...

Vital Stats:
105 * 185 cm, roughly
Kona Solids
Gütermann and Aurifil threads
Freudenberg 100% cotton wadding
lotsa fun to make! .... more

Quilting done ....!

I have another 3 evenings to get this one done and washed. So far, so good. While not entirely perfect, I think the quilting is straight enough. What's more, I managed to hit most of the corners the way I meant to ....

Now onto binding!

Quilting Almondesque

Did you know? Good prep work makes machine quilting so much easier and so much more enjoyable! You did? And you never told me???

I painstakingly pinned the whole thing and then taped about a centimetre away from where I wanted to quilt. Then I practically flew through half the quilting ...



Now I need to strip the tape and re-apply new tape at a 90 degree angle. And I'm not holding out great hope that I placed my pins strategically enough.

Progress II

So I spend all evening on the floor with this:


only to turn it over ...

to find that I had scrimped too much ...

and now having to spend more time fixing my cheapskateness ...

Progress

Almondesque - the top!

From a shoebox


to the finished top:

And then there is this ...

I am still struggling with deciding on the lay-out of this quilt which has to be finished by mid-November.

Maybe a scribble with coloured pencils will help ...
High time, don't you think!?

Making headway with fabric selection

I have finally managed to find enough Kona Solid in blue to start fretting over colour arrangements for the top ...

What also wants to be addressed is the sewing room and the heap of mending ...:

But the ironing is done and the room is already looking much better with everything else put where it belongs!

Meanwhile being mulled over in my head ...

Friends of ours inquired a while back when (yes, when!?) they would get a quilt!? Seeing how they are building a new house in Bauhaus style, this seems as good an opportunity as any. But the design choices, oh, the choices ... so I surfed the web and came across the above by Orangebird242.

Because my friends are not really Bauhaus kinda people and love Edward Hopper, I thought I'd stick with Hopper-esque colours of blues and greys but arrange all in a Bauhaus-esque design. And ei, presto, my first real excuse to order Kona Solids. But someone something went wrong when I chose the colours:


On screen (and on the print-out of the shop), they go together really well, in real life: not so much! Argh! Back to square one then, eh?