Tongariro Crossing (and the Peacock Party)

I've finished my Sue Spargo quilt and I love it.

Sue Spargo has called this pattern "Nature Trail", but my quilt doesn't look anything like a walk in the woods.  The colours in my quilt make me think of a volcano, so I'm calling my version "Tongariro Crossing".

The Tongariro Crossing is 20km (12 mile) hike across an active volcano in the middle of New Zealand's North Island.  Click here for details.  There are trees and birds at the start and end of the track, but up at the summit it's very barren and you can see into the crater lake of the volcano.  The website recommends that people check the level of volcanic activity before they set out!!!  https://www.geonet.org.nz/volcano/tongariro  Don't worry, the track will be closed if there's any danger.

I haven't done the Tongariro Crossing hike, and I don't intend to, but I've seen plenty of photos and it does look amazing.

I made this quilt during a mystery stitch along with Sue Spargo in 2016.  My inspiration fabric was this beautiful Anna Maria Horner fabric pictured above, called Folk Song Minor Chords. I also wanted to include some of this fabric below in this quilt:

Each month Sue released another pattern and most of them included some hand embroidery.  I loved doing the hand stitching, and I learnt some new stitches with the help of my Sue Spargo Creative Stitching book.

I used Sue Spargo's Wonderfil variegated threads for most of the hand stitching. These threads are Perle 8 thickness and made by Wonderfil. Lots of shops stock them because they are great for embellishing quilts. I love using them for wool felt applique. 

Yes, those Wonderfil threads are addictive.  I won't tell you how many I have in my cupboard.

I put stabiliser on the back of my blocks to support the hand embroidery, but then I realised that I wouldn't be able to hand quilt it.  So I did a bit of machine quilting myself, but it wasn't enough and I was too timid to try free motion quilting on this quilt.  Although it's not a big quilt, it is quite heavy due to the extra stabiliser, and I couldn't move it freely on my domestic Bernina.

So a few months ago I took it into my local long arm quilter, Sue Burnett at Busy Bee Quilt Shop, and she kindly finished it for me.  I suspect finishing someone else's quilting is like doing sewing repairs, so I do appreciate Sue helping me out.

I'd had the binding cut and waiting in the cupboard for more than a year, so it only took a day or two to put it on.  Now my quilt is finished!!!

Size: 49' x 64" (124cam x 162cam)
Pattern: Nature Trail by Sue Spargo

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!

Click here to enter

#instastitchwithsue - Sue Spargo mystery quilt

For the past 12 months Sue Spargo has been running a free mystery quilt along on Instagram. She called it #instastitchwithsue and released a pattern each month.  Here's my version:

I love Sue Spargo's designs - I have her calendar on my office wall and gaze at it often when I should be doing work.

I couldn't pass up the idea of a mystery quilt along with hand stitching thrown in!  So I started watching for the patterns each month and tried to keep up through out the year.  Here's a link to ALL 12 blocks. Just click on the photos to download the patterns.

I thought I'd use different fabrics from my usual selections, so I went with orange and purple!! Quite radical, but I found a few fabrics that contained both colours, and built up a collection from there.

Here's how some of my blocks turned out.  I didn't do quite as much decorative stitching as Sue did, but some of my fabrics were very patterned and I knew the stitching wouldn't show up which ever colour thread I used.  The variegated threads are Sue Spargo's Eleganza perle 8 threads for Wonderfil thread.  The colour variations are beautiful!!

And all together before I started to join them:

 I decided to make a pieced backing from some of my purple fabrics so I did a bit of quilt maths,

and here it is.

I'm not sure how I'm going to quilt this yet.  I need some time to think about that.  I might even machine quilt it myself because I'm, feeling inspired after reading Jacquie Gering's new book - Walk.