Quilt and quilt again.

 Now that the girls are back at school (OK, just for two days, then a day off when the school turns into a Polling Station before we get back to usual) I've made good inroads into a couple of small quilting projects.

This is the April stay at home round robin - the quilting stage.  It doesn't show on this photo of the whole piece, so I've shown a detail shot of the house.  I've quilted each block differently, and it was fun to do.  My biggest challenge was choosing a thread colour.  I'm not fond of changing threads frequently (or at all, if I'm honest) but I didn't have a variegated thread that had the colours of this quilt in.  I felt that my best options would be either a grey or a golden brown.  I chose the golden brown in the end, and I think that it was the right choice.

I also cut the piece into it's final wobbly shape.  I think that it's going to need a bias binding for the edge, rather than the straight cut that I would usually use.  This month (May) is another chance to add embellishments - I need to re-add the rose and beads that were just pinned on, but I'm not sure that something else wouldn't just be gilding the lily!

  And this project was finished (with several questions from DD2 about just how long I could spent sewing one tree).

Here the tree is with the marking / re-marking (I'm not sure that marking the cross hatching after the initial back stitch quilting is the best way forward for me - I managed to go wrong, damp down that area, but then had the dampness travel about the cloth and start moving ink from the other lines too - it looked very messy!).

I really need to learn how to tension the piece better - without using a hoop which I don't fancy.  Even on this piece (started 12" square, finished 11" square) I had to put a pleat in it.....perhaps I should just stop trying to work on whole cloth quilts, even this tiny, and concentrate on piecing!

 This is how it looked after a thorough rinsing in water.  At least the 'wash away blue' came out, and hadn't been heat set by the warm weather that we'd had.

I smoothed it out on a towel to dry, but didn't need to block it to get it to lie flat (just that one pleat, then, no more).

And here it is in  it's almost finished state.  I've added a batik border and machine quilted it.  Although I think that it would have been nice to hand quilt it, batiks are so closely woven that I think it would be too painful.

I did keep the spacing the same, though.  So 1/4" between the concentric squares, just like the hand quilted filler behind the tree.

I rather imagine that this will become a cushion cover - and then be given away!

It's been fun to do, and I can see that my quilting could improve if I carried on working at it.  I've started another hand quilting piece but will probably take my time over this one.

Now it's time to draft a couple of design possibilities for a school leaving present for a member of staff....trying to get a balance between something that the children can join in with, but that won't be too labour intensive when it comes to the construction.  I've got lots of ideas, but not sure how they could best be implemented!