Cartwheel progress

I'm very nearly finished my Cartwheel quilt from Kaffe Fassett's Quilt Grandeur book, and I love it. I haven't put the binding on yet, but I wanted to get a photo after I finished the hand quilting.

The last stitches going in.

 I started this quilt on a rainy day in August 2018.  I remember it well, because I wasn't going to start anything new, but winter was getting me down, and the bright colours in this quilt looked so appealing. 

Foundation paper piecing the spokes in the cartwheels took a few months, but by November 2018 I was ready to start assembling the blocks. 

Rainbow ricrac is from Spotlight in New Zealand

By March 2019 I had the top together, but I didn't start hand quilting it until July 2019, and then I only did a few blocks before putting it away and moving on to other things.  I didn't like my original idea for the hand quilting, so I left it while I came up with a new plan. 

I quilted in the ditch on the spokes

I pulled this quilt out again a few weeks ago in mid January, and decided it was time to finish it now.  I stuck with it and now it's all quilted, and I just have to put the binding on. 

This quilt will be a lovely soft lap quilt for cold winter evenings because it's got wool batting - my favourite type of batting for hand quilting and warmth in winter. 

Now it's time for the Peacock Party.  What have you been up to this week?  Feel free to link up a recent blog post below:

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

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Hand quilting my Cartwheel quilt

It's winter here in New Zealand and that means that it rains a lot.  Our country doesn't get to be so green without a lot of rain.  I need something bright and cheery to work on during winter, so I decided to start hand quilting my Kaffe Fassett cartwheel quilt.

I'm following the advice in the pattern and quilting along the black lines in the background Parasols fabric.  I'm using Aurifil 12wt in black to quilt down the centre of these lines.  I don't have to mark any quilting lines - I'm just following the lines on the fabric.  I love how it's resulting in puffy areas in the quilt - partly due to the wool batting in the quilt.  See below.

I love the Aurifil 12wt threads for hand quilting because they are soft and cottony, and sit nicely on the fabrics.

I wasn't sure how I would quilt the cartwheels themselves.  Sometimes you just have to try out some options before the answer becomes clear.

The colours I considered using

I tried marking some circles and quilting them with the thinner 28wt thread by Aurifil.  But, I wasn't happy with how the quilted circles looked.  The numerous radiating seams were interfering with my stitch length and I couldn't get the stitches looking even.  The quilted circles were making the cartwheels look very busy, even with 28wt thread.

Usually I like to see the quilting on my quilts, but in this case I decided that it would probably be better to just quilt in the ditch and let the fabrics do the talking.  So I'm using multiple different colours of Aurifil 28wt to hand quilt in the ditch on the cartwheels.  Here's my first cartwheel quilted in the ditch.  I like how it looks - clean and uncluttered. I did consider quilting down the centre of each segment of the cartwheel, but that was going to make it look too busy again.

It's very hard to photograph - I promise you it looks better in real life.

Only after I settle on a method do I go back and unpick my earlier attempts.  I like to have both options in the quilt so I can compare them side by side and make my final decision.

This pattern is in Kaffe Fassett's Quilt Grandeur book, although I'll warn you that it's quite hard to get hold of the Parasols background fabric now.  The pattern uses Parasols in black, but I have used the blue colourway.  I couldn't get enough fabric to make the quilt full sized, so I have made a smaller square quilt.

It's sunny here today so I plan to go out for a walk - it's definitely too wet for any gardening. 

Cartwheel quilt - and the Peacock Party

This week I've been working on my Cartwheel quilt.  It's a pattern from Kaffe Fassett's Quilt Grandeur book.

Before you run off to start one similar, I have to warn you that the background Parasols fabric is out of print and very hard to find now.  Each time I share a photo of this to the Kaffe Fassett Facebook group a lot of people go hunting for the fabric, and end up disappointed.  There's no secret stash of it in New Zealand either - I was just lucky to have a friend who bought it when it was first released, but never got around to making this quilt.  I bought it off her because I've had the book for years and always loved this pattern.

I've finally applied all my ric rac, and yesterday I appliqued down the centre motifs that cover the points where all the spoke meet.  Once those circles are on I could cut away some of the bulk on the back and the quilt lies flat now.

I do love the rainbow ric rac.  It just adds to all the craziness!

I still have to find some striped fabric for the borders, and applique more motifs on the edges, but I'm almost finished this top. I'll hand quilt this one because I don't want quilting going over the ric rac.

Now it's your turn to share what you've been up.  Feel free to link up a recent blog post in the Peacock Party.  Thank you to all the loyal followers who have been linking up week after week.  I sense a little community is developing here and appreciate you returning week and week.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Cartwheel quilt

Yes, I've started something new.  It's a crazy pattern from Kaffe Fassett's Quilt Grandeur book called "Cartwheel".

The rainbow ric rac is from Spotlight in New Zealand, but I believe you can buy it at Joann's in USA. 

There's so much going on in this quilt, and to top it all off, it's got ric rac!

I've admired the pattern since I first got the book, and when my good friend Anne was destashing some of her Kaffe Fassett fabrics, I spied the background fabric called Parasols in her box.

So Anne kindly sold me the fabric, and I started to pull together all my spotty fabrics from my various storage places.

The fan pieces are foundation paper pieced and I soon worked out that I could use very small scraps in some of the sections.

I've finished all my fans now, so next I have to cut the background fabric into large squares.  Then I get to place the fans and add the ric rac.  Yay!!!

This could be something fun to work on over the Christmas holidays.