Voila! Or Nearly!

Ages ago I mentioned that I was making a patchwork quilt - I really, really don't know how you quilters manage to make so many quilts in such a short space of time as it seemed to take me forever!  Anyway as today is a bright and sunny day and thus the light was right to photograph my effort I decided to take the photos even though the border isn't quite finished.  I almost left it too late as the sun had gone from the washing line and the only place that was still in full sun was the hedge!  That's Mr M's hand you can just see bottom right holding it down as the wind was trying to blow it away!

  This quilt is the first proper quilt I have ever made - the one I made for the wanderer was simply backed with fleece and not layered like this one.  I was determined not to buy anything to make it and the fabrics are all bits I had - some were given to me by a friend of a friend who was downsizing and getting rid of some of her crafting stuff, some was from projects I had made in the past, and the backing determined the finished size as it was amongst the fabrics I was given and this was its size - 104 cm x 120 cm or 41" x 48" approx.  I was aiming for a completely random effect but now I see that I seem to have finished up with 3 orange squares together bottom left.  Oh well never mind!

 I machine stitched the patches together using reels of thread which I chose when a friend - one of a group of friends with whom I did the City and Guilds Creative Textiles course back in the late 80s and with whom I have stayed in touch - died and her family gave our group all her bits and bobs to see if any of us wanted any of it and I chose her tin of sewing threads along with a couple of skeins of her hand spun vegetable dyed wools.  So apart from the wadding which I originally bought for the wanderer's quilt and then didn't use I have made this totally from what I had.

The blue inner border is made up of strips joined to make a length and I am now wondering if I should perhaps quilt that in some way - maybe lazy daisies or crosses at intervals perhaps or maybe I'll just take the tacking stitches out and leave it.  I hand quilted the whole thing using Perle 8 thread in different colours - thread I already had.  I probably should have done it in both directions or done several rows of stitching but I'd lost the will to live by the time the first single row was done!  I can hear Madame le President, at the Patchwork group I used to go to when I lived in France, tutting at the stitching but then I thought perhaps it added a sort of naive look which went with the random and childlike effect of the patchwork - well that's my story anyway!  As nobody other than me will see it guess it doesn't matter too much anyway and I am quite pleased with it.  I won't be going in for quiltmaking in a big way any time soon though as however much I want to enjoy doing it patchwork doesn't seem to be my metier at all - as I said to the French friend who first encouraged me to join the patchwork group in France I am not accurate enough and I now know that I am also far too slow and I get fed up before I am halfway there!  I am in awe of people who can make quilts on a regular basis and those who go to their patchwork groups every couple of weeks with yet another one finished.