Tuesday 1 November 2011

Pinwheel quilt top finished!

I finished piecing my blue pinwheel quilt yesterday. The quilt consists of 32 large 10.5" pinwheels and 256 small 4.5" pinwheels. To make a small 4.5" pinwheel, one needs 2 light and 2 dark 3" squares of fabric, which must each be cut in half diagonally to make the 8 right-angled triangles for each pinwheel. To make a large 10.5" pinwheel, one needs 2 light and 2 dark 6" squares of fabric, which must each be halved diagonally. One also needs 4 x 36.5" x 4.5" strips of fabric for the center plain bands. All seams must be 0.25". Finished quilt is approximately 88" x 88". 

Now I have to decide on the quilting. I definitely want 100% wool batting. I'm not sure if I want to attempt hand quilting, or if I should rather have it done professionally? Please let me know what you think, I have never attempted hand-quilting so I'm quite keen to try it, but this quilt is huge (225 cm x 225 cm) so I'm worried that I will get overwhelmed and then don't finish it...

Thursday 13 October 2011

Blue pinwheel quilt is underway



My latest quilting project is a square pinwheel quilt that I have designed and am making using Kaffe Fassett fabrics. My colour inspiration for this quilt came from Monet's Water Lilies paintings (see examples). There are actually over 300 water lily paintings by Monet. The purple-blue, green and pink hues create such a tranquil feeling. I have to assemble 252 small pinwheel blocks and 32 large ones. It will keep me busy for a while...

Wednesday 12 October 2011

First Kaffe Fassett quilt finished

I just finished quilting my very first Kaffe Fassett quilt, based on his Spring Boston Common quilt pattern from his book "Simple Shapes, Spectacular Quilts". It was quite a mission to get hold of the fabric since a lot of the fabrics in the original pattern are out of print. I had to do a lot of substitutions but I think that it came out really well after all. I learnt a lot from sewing this quilt, can hardly wait to finish my next one.
I backed the quilt with a gorgeous Philip Jacobs print called English Rose in the lavender colour-way. 
I tried to photograph it next to the lavish pink bougainvillea in our garden, but it was a little tricky due to the size of the bushes.