red oak quilts

Now we are in February and I have hardly blogged at all, just once so far this year, my quilting has been just as slack...

These are a few gifts I have made for the some of the family. I love the Flying Geese design but haven't made much in it. The first two photos below are of a quilt I made for my youngest daughter for Christmas. I have used lovely plain cotton fabrics on calico. I dont know if others have noticed but IKEA sells beautiful calico fabric at just £2 per metre.

I have hand quilted this using very fine embroidery/crochet cotton in a natural colour. This is lovely to use and glides through the fabric and wadding smoothly.

The following photos are cushions I made for my eldest son, one for his birthday and two for Christmas, I have one more top waiting to be hand quilted and then made up into a cushion cover. I have use Irish linen for these cushion covers and hand quilted with sashiko thread which is also lovely to quilt with.

We have just returned from a week in Devon celebrating Gilby's fifth birthday, Amy's birthday and our 40th wedding anniversary.Hopefully I will get to blog about those events before the month ends :)

another star quilt on the go

I have started another star quilt made from the Irish linen that my son gave me from one of his photo shoots

I love working with this fabric and am using colours that I would never usually choose which I think is always a good thing...to be given something other than what I would usually use makes me think more outside the box.

The cutting out and piecing together of the quilt top takes only a little time, I could put together the whole quilt in a day and then take time to hand quilt the layers. 

I'm really enjoying using the Sashiko thread, it stitches so well through the layers using a long Sashiko needle.

This quilt is smaller than the blue and red quilt that I made for my son (featured a few posts back) and would be ideal for a child or on the sofa

Sashiko stitching

I have managed to work on the linen star quilt that I am making for my son, the top and bottom only took a couple of days to put together and when the wadding and sashiko thread arrived on Saturday I was able to baste the layers with a little help from hubby and Molly :)

I am really enjoying working with the Sashiko thread for the hand quilting. My cousin, when she found out I was using it, sent me an paper that she had written about Indigo for her degree in which says 

Sashiko meaning literally little stabs, is a technique traditional to Japan. Old garments were re-cycled, the layers of fabric hand sewn together with a running stitch, in a contrasting colour.This practice harks back to times when cloth was a valuable commodity. both‘ “If you can wrap three beans in a piece of cloth, then it is big enough to keep.” This old saying demonstrates the frugality of ancient Japanese rural society, which held firmly to the notion of richness in poverty’ (Indigo, C. Le Grand, 78)

So sashiko was traditionally used to re-inforce indigo garments, recycle small pieces of indigo fabric to make larger ones, and in some cases the stitches made patterns which told stories of their own. 

I am stitching straight lines, two inches apart, across the entire quilt. I am glad it's winter as the weight of the quilt is keeping me warm and I certainly hope I finish it before the warmer weather arrives!