A Linen Quilt

 

Back in August I made a quilt.  It was, and still remains, my most favourite thing that I have ever made.  I have not blogged it until now because I am a bad blogger (I'm going to try and be a 'Better Blogger' in 2013!)

It was a square lap quilt of half square triangles using the Linen/Cotton Blend fabric that I have in the shop.  The tones of these linens are just so wonderful that as soon as I saw a fat quarter stack of them I knew that I had to make a solids only quilt with them.

I really enjoyed sewing this up.  The linen is a bit more tricky to work with than quilting cotton, as it gives a touch more, but really it was very easy to sew.  The cotton gives it all the stability that you need.  And the way that the quilt feels is lovely - it had a different quality to cotton - heavier.

I made a great stack of half square triangles using blue and purple tones from the Mimosa Sea bundle and Mimosa Berry bundle and then backed the quilt with Purple and bound it with Charcoal of the same linen blend.  The quilting was a doddle with my favourite circle method: I draw around a glass tumbler for the smallest centre circle and then quilt with a guide bar on the machine, using the bar to trace the last quilted circle.

You may have seen the quilt if you stopped by my booth at the Festival of Quilts.  I had it up on the wall there and I think I managed to encourage a few of you to try quilting with the same linen.

I took the pictures of this quilt ages ago too.  Whilst I was taking the pictures, at a spot around the corner from my house, a lady came out of her bungalow to enquire what I was up to.  She said that she had had the mental health nurse over the previous day, and wanted to check that I was real and that she wasn't really going mad seeing a lady taking photographs of a bedspread!

After the Festival of Quilts I lay awake wondering what I should do with this finished quilt.  As I said before it was my most favourite thing I'd ever made and in its making I had become rather attached to it.  However, I had always had my youngest sister in my mind as I made it.  She has not been well and had been in hospital for the duration of it's construction, and she knew of it's existence... I would update her on the progress during my weekly visits.  Also, I finished it the week before her 18th birthday - it was destined to be hers not mine!  So, away it went (weep weep!) but it has gone to a very good home... I might even go and visit it some time.

You can buy these linens in the shop here by the metre, and there are a selection of fat quarter bundles, named Mimosa's, in the bundles section.