Picnic Quilt

My Picnic Quilt is finished.  I love how the pattern emerges when it's viewed from a distance. 

This quilt is made from blocks that I won in our Block of the Month draw at Capital Quilters.  I did add a few more blocks myself to balance out the colour scheme in some areas.

I hand quilted it with Aurifil 12wt.  I initially intended to just do straight lines running through each block, but I felt it needed more stabilising, so I added echo quilting in grey in the opposite direction to make each of the darker rows stand out. 

I chose a brick red colour for the binding because it works well with the red spot I used on the internal border.

the binding, before it's turned to the back

This quilt has more red in it than anything I've ever made before!

The finished quilt is 76" x 76". I used wool batting so it's lovely and soft.

Picnic Quilt (previously known as BOM HST)

Last week I started hand quilting my Picnic Quilt.  I've decided to call it a Picnic Quilt because it reminds me of mum's quilt that we sat on at picnics when I was growing up in the 1970's.

Mum made most of our clothes, and many of the scraps were included in the picnic quilt. I remember sitting on that quilt and identifying all the fabrics I liked in the quilt.

It's grown bigger than this now

My quilt is made from Half Square Triangle blocks that I won at Capital Quilters Block of the Month last year.  So it contains scraps from lots of guild members. The blocks are 4.5" unfinished - 4" finished.

I didn't have to sew it up in this way, but I really liked the design so I just kept it that way.  However, sewing together blocks trimmed by other people can be a bit difficult, so I put in some borders to reset the alignment.

Not a great photo with the light shining through, but you get the idea.

I'm hand quilting straight lines on this one with Aurifil 12wt in red.  I like big stitch hand quilting so the stitches show and add character to the quilt.

  I'm also echo quilting in the opposite direction in grey so the coloured sections pop out (you can see that around the central motif).

I've been really good at keeping on task so far this year. This quilt is number 5 on my Quilting Priorities for 2018 list.  I've finished numbers 1 and 2, but 3 and 4 are still WIPs.