It's Been a Long Time

It has been a long time coming this postage stamp quilt. In fact some decent weather to photograph it has been a long time coming too. It was my new years resolution to finish it in 2019 and it is now complete and completely gorgeous.

The topper was finished in October but I just didn't seem to get around to buying a sheet and batting to complete it. Anyway, I did in the end, and here it is.

Some burning questions you may need answering:-

The quilt is for a single bed size

It has 1400 little squares that are cut at 5cm and sewn with a 0.5cm seam allowance

It is hand quilted with embroidery threads and running stitches.

The backing is a new flat sheet from Dunelm.

Some squares are fussy cut to reveal a picture and others are cut to squeeze the last out of a tiny piece of fabric. There are houses, birds, dogs, fungi, butterflies and flowers.

It has a name plate called 'All the little bits of you' 2020

It is for my god daughter for her 18th Birthday (she is 14 in April!) Oh yes, ahead of schedule.

The fabric is from everywhere. Take a look, some might be from you: Christina, Linda, Shirley, Helen and many others. Thank you to you all. The key to this quilt is not quantity but variety. Each block has 64 squares so you need as many different fabrics as possible in each block. Some, not all, have 64 different ones in! 

You can only really achieve this by sharing fabrics or buying scrap packs. There are many  pieces from Christina at Colourful life. We did a fabric swap and sent each other some tiny scraps in the post. This meant that most of the orange/mustard/ocre tones which would have been missing from my quilt were represented and lifted the other colours significantly.

The other key to making this quilt is to be as free as you can allow yourself to be. There is no planning, no procrastinating you just sew tiny squares together with gay abandon. I had one rule and that was that two fabrics could not sit next to each other - and then I spotted one when it was finished!

I used an extra wide binding from frumble which was left over from another quilt so all in all I bought the wadding and a flat sheet. I also had a gift voucher given to me when I left a job in December and I bought this little stab thingy called a micro stitch. It fires out tiny plastic ties (like you get on new socks but much smaller) It is perfect for quilters to hold your layers together when you hand quilt. Then you snip them out and put them in the plastic recycling.

Hope you like it. If you want to check out Christina's version click here to see more riotous colour.

Jo xxxx