What I have Quilted Lately

My one day a week out in Boston with Martha is still something very much at the centre of my week. We quilt together and organise her business, share ideas and thoughts and mostly get lost on pinterest finding ideas and adding them to a very long list of what we want to create!

Quilting still brings a huge change to my week. It is one day when I can be totally creative and I often come home completely exhausted by it. It's a good exhaustion though. One that only comes with using your brain all day, and often leads to me daydreaming more on other ideas, so the thinking doesn't stop!

Recently my nephew/Godson turned one. With such tools around me I figured that what I should do was make him a quilt. After all, Martha has all the tools in her studio and it simply was a case of putting everything she has taught me into practice. Now I am no quilter, in fact I have all the ideas but just a lack of patience in producing a result. I think every week I come up with a new design but that is just put on a pile of ideas that I will eventually make! This quilt though, this was one that came together in a couple of weeks!

I went for a super easy design, basically two sheets of patterned fabric which meant no traditional piecing together. I simply put wadding in between and quilted over the top. It was much easier than I had imagined. For me, the idea of making a quilt needs to be met with understanding the practicality of how long it will take you. As I said, I am not patient enough for the quilter's life yet but a quicker project like this was really achievable to a beginner. 

You see, as a quilter you could sit at a sewing machine and quite easily use that to quilt your layers together but as I work with someone who has designed and sells her own quilting frame, my experience in quilting is quite different. 

A quilting frame actually allows you to stand and use free motion to quilt with. It's drawing, but just with a machine in your hand instead of a pencil. That in itself sounds crazy but actually, for me, having now worked with it for a while and having a teacher there to help me, I find it really fun and it just is a really cool technique to use to produce a piece of art.

Creating this quilt for my nephew didn't take long. Once fabric had arrived from HIGGS AND HIGGS, a beautiful fabric shop, it was just a case of assembling the 3 layers, pinning it to the stand and going wild with swirls on the machine. 

For non quilters this seems like the weirdest explanation; frames, layers, but if you want to delve into the world of quilting, it actually becomes very easy to understand. Have a look at this post for JUKI CLUB, explains much more!

I suppose I like to share what I am making as it gives people a chance to keep up with where I am at with work and with this new hobby that I have been given the chance to learn about this year!

This is the finished quilt. Beautiful for a baby to wrap up in or play on and with the addition of an old shirt pocket, something that they can equally enjoying playing with!

If you want more ideas about quilting check out JUKI CLUB who I work with who share more technical details about quilting projects!