Sparky's Mummy Made. . .

I wouldn’t call the world map panel that I quilted for my son ‘finished’, however it is up on his wall!

To finish it off I’d like to put markers for places in Australia where he has been (including home) and markers at other places in the world showing where friends and family live. But that can happen later; I have too much else on at the moment. Also, I needed a feeling of ACHIEVEMENT, even if it isn’t also completion. As this project will need updating as we travel more in the future, this feels OK.

I have the quilt top for the Retro Curves quilt finished as well as the binding cut and pressed. I’ve wound up settling on a medium grey fabric for the backing and binding. That means I’ll probably quilt the ‘petals’ with thread to match each petal so that on the verso you can see them. I’m not thrilled with the dark grey backing – however I think I actually bought medium grey fabric months ago as the backing to finish it off! I couldn’t find it in my stash the day I went to purchase fluff, and without there being any other fabrics I liked that there was enough of, grey it is.

I’ve also mentioned this quilt in previous posts, UFO: Retro Flowers, WIP: Retro Flowers, and Sunday Stash: Let’s finish some WIPs. This highlights to me that this WIP is over a year old! Oops! However I have gotten what I wanted to learn out of it, i.e. I have successfully pieced curves on my machine. And they weren’t as bad as I thought they might be!

I’ve got several works in progress and am – yet again – trying to make progress on them. I’ve completed several projects in between, but when a project is for me there is no impetus to complete it by a certain date. So it is put aside while I complete things for other people.

I started the Retro Flowers quilt in a class to learn how to use curves in quilts. I’ve mentioned the quilt in two previous posts:

• Sunday Stash: Here Come the Curves
• WIP: Retro Flowers

So. Yes. I started this over a year ago. Well, today I FINALLY have all the blocks finished! With all the trimming, this quilt really suits a production line: it’s easy to lose track of what you’re doing. I must admit that it took me a while to figure out what I needed to do, what stage that various unfinished flowers were at, etc. But now they are ready to finally put them together, add the borders, then quilt. I’m busy next weekend, but hopefully I can at least get the flowers all together. Another positive note is that I had no trouble sewing the curve for the part of a block I had to redo. Progress!

I have had this nagging idea for over a year – maybe 2? – to make a quilt 1) using solid colours and 2) quilting it with the same colour – so on the traditional ‘top’ you don’t see the quilting but on the verso you see ‘something’. I used this idea for a baby quilt for a friend in New Zealand.

The top is an equilateral triangles quilt, making 3D boxes in rainbow colours.

On the ‘verso’, you see the boxes again. The tops have a similar angular quilting, and for the other two sides of the boxes I would use a larger and smaller version of a free motion quilting pattern.

I loved making it, I love quilting it, but this is not the end of this idea!

Unfortunatley, it was not without its flaws. UUUGGGGHHHHH!!!!