As a few of you will know I have been having problems with my jaw and face for the last six weeks and have been sitting around not doing much.... but I did manage to read the above books (I am now just going on to read book six in the series) I do not like sitting doing nothing, so I decided to dig out a UFO. I knew it would have to be a very small project, as I could not concentrate for long.
I don't think I could have found a smaller project!
This project was in a poly bag in the corner of my UFO drawer and had been there for AT LEAST seven years!!
I do not know where I saw the original design, but I do know the blocks were HUGE, at least 10 inches in height.
I like my blocks to be small....
... the smaller the better, so I redrew the block to 2.5 inches and the depth of the tulip head is 1 inch.
I must have been mad!! Look at the size of those corner triangles!! They are only 1/4inch long! And I must have been having a really bad cutting-out day, as all my seam allowances are dreadful!!
I only had three tulips to sew to finish, and all the material and templates were there, so I got going. I wanted the quilt to look like a garden, so once I had the tulips sewn togethar, I sashed them to make it look like paths between the flowers, and then sewed on green borders.
I then drew out the quilting design on a piece of paper. I wanted it to look like a snail was wandering round the garden - you can see him in the picture - sorry Blogger will not let me turn it the proper way. I was concentrating (or trying to) so hard to get the stitches even that I forgot to include the poor wee thing!
You can see a close up of the design above.
I don't usually use blue wash-out pens or purple fade-away pens for marking quilts, but this time I was going for the easy option. I used the blue wash-out pen, because I knew I would be washing the quilt immediately after I finished it.
I washed it carefully and then soaked up the excess water from the quilt in a towel.
I decided to pin and block the small quilt just to see if it improved the look of the quilt, so I left it on the floor of the conservatory, where it gets nice and warm, when the sun is shining. When it was dry, I took out the pins and had a good look at it!
Disaster!!!!!!
EEEK!!
The red material leeched into the surrounding material!! I ALWAYS wash my material, when I bring them home, so I do not understand how this happened! the above photograph doesn't look too bad, but that is after I did this -
I put some stain removal on it and it did make a difference. I washed it again and reblocked and redried it, and this is the result -
I am a bit sad it is not perfect (and neither is my quilting), but it is one UFO off the list.
Till next time.
tich
