Next project: Barrels of Fun

From Karen Snyder's Fat Quarter Fun I'm putting together the above block to make Barrels of Fun with the following material (feat. a lot of Amy Butler's Love, Joel Dewberry's Deer Valley and others).

Binding

When I left Australia I had sandwiched my quilt and had begun to quilt the middle section over the blocks. When my sewing machine finally arrive here in the UK I finished off the quilting. The last little bit to do was the binding. However, I felt that finding out how to bind the quilt was a bit of a pain so here's a few things I learned:

1. Deciding on the width of your binding can be deceiving. If you want something that's a little less than an inch (see photo) cut 3 inch strips.

2. If you have finished quilting your quilt and still have a bunch of wadding and backing hanging around the outside don't cut it off! Wait until you attach the binding and then cut it off just under a 1/4 of an inch.

3. Cut your binding down the longest side of your material. To know how many strips to cut measure the middle section of your quilt both ways (say, 45" x 60") then add these numbers together (105"). Double it (210") then divide by 40 (5.25) and round up to the nearest whole number (6). This is how many strips you should cut.

4. Join your strips using diagonal seams (bias stitching, apparently). When making the diagonal seams you'll be putting one strip under another, good sides facing each other, at 90 degree angles. To make the seams all go the same way just make sure that if the strip was the one on the bottom for one end then it should be the one on the top for the next end.

5. Then use Step 1 of this fantastic guide to start you off.

6. Then use this to do your corners.

7. Then back to this to finish off.

8. Bliding stitching the binding to the back of the quilt is mighty easy with a cup of chai, banana bread and 6 hours of Pride and Prejudice.

Finished!

I have finished my very first quilt. It took many months but it is finally done. In hindsight I think it would have been better to have more blocks and less border but since it was my first quilt I wanted to get lots of practise with the borders. It's only a single quilt but since I went a bit crazy with the borders, as you can see, it almost fits on a double which will be good when we have guests.

So I'm super happy with my first attempt. I think it looks quite pleasant and I'm looking forward to starting on the next project!

Beyond Fabrics

I don't really like going down to London but since Cambridge is a little dry on the quilt shop side of things I thought trying to find some patterns and fabric while in London for a play would be a good idea.

It wasn't.

Firstly, there are barely any shops in London for quilting and only two out of those few received good reviews. Secondly, those two are at opposite ends of London so only one was a possibility in one day.

The one I chose was Beyond Fabrics which claims to be in the City of London but is actually in the East End and due to current works the closest tube stop is in Zone 2 and is quite a walk away. We ended up getting a bus closer to the area it is in from Bethnal Green. And to be honest the area is really dodgy and a little scary. However, once you get to the street that the store is on you feel like you are in a different world. It's very cute and very retro and there are lots of surrounding stores that are worth the visit.

The Beyond Fabrics store is quite nice. The staff were very helpful and although the fabric stock wasn't as large as I had hoped they had some wonderful designs in there. I ended up just buying a book (Fat Quarter Fun) but do intend to buy some fabric online.

If you are in London it's certainly worth the visit. Brick Lane is close by as well so adding Beyond Fabrics to your East End trip is easy!

Cotton Patch

More material is on its way to me. This time it was from Cotton Patch. The website was not as easy to navigate as Quilter's Cloth but I did enjoy how many different prints they have. The only other downside is that their material is cut in long quarters and I have no idea how this is going to work out if I decide to do a fat quarter pattern. Does it matter?

Quilter's Cloth

So I'm back into the swing of things. My sewing machine finally arrived and I just have some quilting around the borders of my previous quilt and then the binding to do and then I'm done. The quilt looks absolutely beautiful despite the fact that I had no idea what I was doing the entire time I was making it.

We are now living in a flat in Cambridge owned and furnished by the college. I'm grateful that I don't have to buy furniture but it's a little hard sometimes to make odd bits of furniture blend. At the moment my living room has a dark blue fouton with sky blue cushions constrasting with the bright red couch and the green curtains. So I thought I'd make another quilt that would go over the fouton as an extra blanket for guests and that would tie the colours of the room together a little better.

I had a walk around Cambridge and there's not really much, close to the centre of town, on offer. John Lewis has a few dozen rolls and Cally Co had about the same. Sew Creative had a few more but nothing that jumped out at me.

So I decided to go online shopping instead. Luckily for me the week I was looking for material was the week Quilter's Cloth launched their website. It's a fantastic website, very easy to use, and has a great range. I spent a neat amount of money and am looking forward to buying from there again.

These are just a few that I bought. Not too sure if I'll use all of them, though.