The start of the quilt

My mum is an amazing patchworker, and I love snuggling under the quilt she made for me when I went off to uni. After I started handsewing my sock creatures, I wanted to start handsewing something more. I liked the idea of making a quilt but, to be honest, it requires far too much precision for my patience.

So I wanted a project which would result in a quilt, but not the full on intensitiy of a proper patchwork quilt. I started thinking back to when I did Viking re-enactment and how I had to embroider a lot of my clothes (they didn’t like edges without some sort of decoration!) and that I rather enjoyed it. So I got the idea of make a series of embroidered ‘pictures’ which would then be ‘framed’ by other fabric, thus making a quilt.

After consulting with my mum we went to a fabric shop and chose the four colours that I wanted. Now, I didn’t want it to be a twee, country quilt, but a bright and bold one. So we got the fabric and cut it up into the squares. This required rather more patience than I thought it would, but I persevered and managed not to throw anything  in a temper (which may have happened once or twice, ahem!), and got it done. So then I had to decide on layout. This was the final one (at that stage, there was minor editing in the process).

Colours!

Apologies for the photos, they are just on the iPhone and I never thought about sharing them until now. I will dig the camera out for future posts!

Embroidered pentagram

Oh, yes. The theme for my quilt? Well, Pagan-y things and things which are important at this point in time to me. This one took up an entire skein of embroidery silk! I wasn’t expecting that!

Appliqued sun

This was my first attempt at applique and I really wasn’t happy with it, or it’s partner, the triple moon. I decided it would look strange amongst all of the embroidery and so I decided to remove it.

Ivy leaf

I am rather obsessed with ivy and have been for a while, so this had to go in there!

freehand embroidery

Now, this was one of my last squares and I was rather bored of following a design by now, so decided to brave it and go freehand. I am rather pleased with the results of it!

I have finished all of the blocks now and have just ordered the fabric for each of the ‘frames’ for the ‘pictures’. So, if you like, there will some more pictures when I have finished it at some point!

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