Bloggers' Quilt Festival - my Sashiko quilt

Hello everyone and welcome to my blog. I'm excited to be entering the Bloggers' Quilt Festival for the very first time. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Wendy and I live in Wellington, New Zealand with my husband and two teenage sons. I love quilting and embroidery, hence the name of my blog - Wendy's quilts and more. I'm entering two categories in the Bloggers' Quilt Festival, the large quilt and the hand quilted quilt. This is my entry for the large quilt section.

Sashiko quilt

It's a Japanese sashiko quilt that I designed and made two years ago. It measures 62" x 80".

I never thought that I would use the dark indigo Japanese fabrics, but the shiny Japanese fabrics did speak to me and knew I needed the navy panels to offset them.

I used books and the internet to design the patterns for each of the navy squares, and then I hand stitched them on with Perle 8 ecru cotton before I assembled the quilt.

I'm a hand quilter at heart so I hand quilted this quilt with a very simple design so the sashiko panels would stand out.

If you're interested in knowing more about how I made this quilt, you can read my earlier blog post on this quilt which will give you all the details. Just click here.

Thank you for reading about my quilt, and enjoy the blog quilt festival.

Grow Your Blog 2014 and Giveaway

This is a special blog post for Grow Your Blog 2014.

Hello, and welcome to my blog. Thanks for dropping by. My name is Wendy and I live in Wellington, New Zealand. I'm in my 40's, happily married with two teenage sons. I'm an accountant, but fortunately I only work part time at the moment. so I have plenty of time for sewing. I've gained a lot of inspiration from reading other people's blogs and seeing what they are working on, so I thought I would start my own blog so I can also share my work with other like minded people.

I started hand sewing when I was quite young, encouraged by my mum who is very good at all forms of sewing, quilting and knitting. I now enjoy a wide range of embroidery and have completed pieces in canvas work, goldwork, hardanger and of course, cross stitch. My local embroidery shop offers embroidery classes and each year I try to learn a new technique each year. Below is an Elizabethan goldwork piece that I learnt to make in a class at Nancy's Embroidery in Wellington.

Goldwork 'W'

I'm currently working on the Gingerbread Village, by The Victoria Sampler. You can read more about the  pieces I have completed by clicking here.

About 10 years ago I dipped my toes into the quilting world and took a year long course to make a sampler quilt. I enjoyed it so much that I have carried on quilting. Although I machine piece, I like to hand quilt my quilts. I currently have 4 quilts on the go that I would like to complete in 2014.  Below is my Sashiko quilt which I designed and made in 2012. Each of the dark navy blocks is hand stitched with a sashiko pattern. I wrote a post on how I made it here.

Sashiko quilt

My main quilting project at present is "Your Place or Mine?". It's a wool felt applique block of the month, designed by Wendy Williams of Material Obsession in Sydney. You can read more about my progress here. I just love the bright colours in this quilt, and all the Kaffe Fasset fabrics.

Your Place or Mine? Block of the Month

I do appreciate you visiting my blog and reading about my quilts and embroidery. If you would like to be entered into the draw for two uniquely flavoured New Zealand fat quarters, please leave a brief comment below. Entries close on 15 Feb 2014.

NZ fat quarters 

One fabric has Buzzy Bee (a favourite noisy toy for toddlers to pull along behind them), and the other has Pukekos (a New Zealand native swamphen bird). I will post these anywhere in the world, because I realise that the likelyhood of the winner being in New Zealand is very low. Good luck!!

Thank you for stopping by.
Wendy

My Sashiko Quilt

In 2012 I embarked on a mission to make a Sashiko Quilt and this was the result:

Sashiko Quilt

Sashiko detail

Why did I decide to make a Sashiko quilt? There were three reasons:
1. I saw the lovely shiny Japanese fabrics stacked up my local quilt shop and thought, "aren't those lovely!".
2. We were about to have a Japanese exchange come and stay with us for three weeks, and later in the year my son would be going to Japan for three weeks.
3. I thought it would be fun to experiment with the hand stitching on the dark panels.

Sashiko Quilt

I didn't realise how mathmatically challenging it would be, but I am an accountant, so I just pulled out my calculator and graph paper and managed just fine.

Here's how I went about making my sashiko quilt:

- I chose a simple pattern with quite big squares for the shiny Japanese fabrics, so I could still see them easily in the finished quilt. I chose a range of the dark indigo fabrics.
- I started to piece the quilt into sections of about 12 blocks. Each of the individual blocks measures 8.75" x 8.75" when finished. I knew I wanted to do the sashiko before the whole quilt was pieced together, but I also knew that the dark indigo blocks needed to be pieced before I did the sashiko so I could stitch to the very edges of them.
- I used library books and the internet to research sashiko patterns. I found lots of designs that I liked, but I had to scale them to fit my blocks.

Some of the sashiko patterns I used in my quilt

Navy blocks are 8.75" x 8.75" finished

 - I used tailor's chalk to draw grids on the dark indigo squares to map out where the designs would sit.
- I went over the chalk marks with the sewing machine because they were rubbing off too easily.
- I hand stitched the Sashiko patterns between the grid lines with Ecru DMC Perle 8. (Sashiko thread is expensive in New Zealand and I knew I would need alot.)
- I pulled out all of the grid lines I'd made with machine stitching.

- Once all of the hand stitching was done, I joined all the sections together and formed the quilt.
- I had quilted simple grid lines and diagonal lines through the shiny blocks and left the sashiko blocks as they were. I didn't want to distract from the sashiko stitching.

The quilt on our bed

The backing, and label of course!

I'm really pleased with how this quilt turned out. It has wool batting in it so is my warmest quilt and we use it in the winter.

The facts:
Each of the navy blocks measures 8.75" x 8.75" finished.
I used ecru Perle 8 for the sashiko stitching.
I did all of the sashiko before I made the quilt sandwich.
The quilt has wool batting.
The finished quilt measures 62" x 80".