The Treehouse

More Hearts and Flowers Progress and a Homecoming

My Tailfeathers quilt came home from being quilted on Tuesday. I've been looking at it ever since! The quilting has been beautifully done by Christine Marriage of Father's Heart Country Quilting It's lying on top of our bed at the moment and just needs its binding stitching on - that might be a job for today. I've taken a few photos, they're not brilliant as it's a dark, cold day here - it's actually trying to snow.

It came home with all the edges beautifully trimmed - I'm relieved about that as trimming isn't one of my favourite things to do.

A couple of close ups of the quilting next.

I've made quite a bit of progress on the Hearts and Flowers centre this week. The squiggles are finished - I'm not scared of those anymore! I've also appliqued the next two layers of the heart on top of the squiggles. Progress will most likely slow down on this now as there are choices to be made and I'm a fine procrastinator!

Hearts and Flowers Quilt

This is a Kim McClean pattern from Kaffe Fassett's Quilt Romance book that I started last year. I like most of Kim's designs and was awaiting the release of the pattern for Stars and Sprigs. I was desperate to start making something in Kaffe fabrics though and in a rush of blood to the head I decided that I would make this quilt while I waited for the Stars and Sprigs pattern to be published. Well by the time the fabric arrived and I had found somewhere to enlarge the patterns for me quite a bit of time passed by. I decided to try the back basting method and set to work tracing the pattern for the centre block onto the back of the fabric. I basted the fabric onto the front and I think I even got as far as needle turning one of the squiggles. It was at that point that I realised I had rather a lot of projects on the go and really ought to finish something off. Plus I wasn't convinced about the back basting method and those squiggles were looking intimidating. The result was that the whole thing was wrapped up and put away. 

When I was making the Henrietta block last week I yearned for more applique to do and there was my heart sitting waiting for me. I got it out over the weekend and made some pretty good progress on it given the amount of sporting and whatnot that was going on. I overcame my problems with the back basting by drawing over the stitching line with my white pencil - I think I need to use a thicker thread for that if I do it again. I'd like to finish the squiggles off this week and get the next layer ready to take to the crop with me on Saturday.

I'm excited about this project again now that I've overcome the problem with the back basting and I'm very happy to have some hand sewing to do.