quilt in progress #3

If you remember the plan I drew for my quilt, it had green fabric in the middle sections. This green fabric had to be bought still - I was waiting for the look of the quilt panels to guide me and for the thrifting gods to present the perfect fabric to me. Just in time for this stage, I found a nice 1970s cotton pillowcase to cut up - thank you thrifting gods!

Because the fabric had a large one-way print, I needed to think how to incorporate it into my quilt to the best effect. To help me decide about where to cut my pieces from, I made a little 'viewfinder' ie. a piece of paper with a hole shaped like the quilt charm I needed to cut. It proved very useful in telling how different areas of the print would work:

Once the triangles were chosen and cut out, I could construct the larger statement pieces for the middle and the middle edges. I ended up with quite a different flower than in the original design of the pillowcase. I was quite stoked about how it worked out - just like the magic of kaleidoscopes.

The only little hiccup was that I needed to reinforce the centre of the largest piece - the way I sewed it together left a little weak spot, like a hole in the very middle. I stitched over it quickly on the reverse to make it perfect.

For the conjoining charms, I used the more solid green parts of the pillowcase fabric. Somehow they tied the design and the look of the quilt together, even though I was very tempted to feature more of the yellow flowers.

The real work on this quilt really began with inserting the statement pieces and the conjoining charms in between the four main panels. No more stitching in a straight line..! This stage required true accuracy and a lot of patient attention. Luckily I was in the mood, and managed it quite well with minimal amount of unpicking (and no swearwords whatsoever)!

The bits I had to unpick were the seam allowances joining up to the green squares. In the last picture you can see how I dealt with pressing the seam allowances apart - it was a trial and error process there, but aiming to achieve the flattest pile of them helped in doing the puzzle.

So now the majority of my quilt was assembled - next comes showing you what it looks like together, then choosing the backing, sandwiching the wadding and then the dreaded stitch-in-the-ditch!