The new extended 14-30 size range for the Grainline Tamarack jacket is now available and I tested the pattern for Grainline back in August. This came at an opportune moment for me, as 2021 has certainly been the year I GOT INTO QUILTING. I’ve already posted about three quilts and I have four others in various stages of completion. In the grand scheme of things, it’s still not a huge number I’ve got under my belt, but I was quite excited at the thought of doing a little quilting practice on pieces of a manageable size.
I’m not sure how to number these quilts as I have several ongoing, but I guess I’ll just number them as I completely finish them. This quilt was one of the last ones I started, but it sewed up very quickly and then I got a bit obsessed with free motion quilting it on my home machine.
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned before that we are massive Halloween fans, but I’m sure I have. I was in the local quilting shop to pick up a small order and I saw some cute Moda jelly rolls on sale in this fabulous Halloween fabric, which I promptly snapped up. This whole quilt was made with one jelly roll and two little extra strips from another fabric (the same as the binding).
The Tres quilt was the second quilt kit I bought in a sale a couple of years ago in order to get my quilt journey going. The first was the Patchwork Quilt, which I finished as my first ever quilt and I wrote lots about how I found basting and quilting it myself at home. For this second, I thought it would be fun to try out a longarm machine. I want to make a large quilt for my parents and I know that it will be very difficult for me to quilt that one on my tiny domestic machine, so I wanted to know if it was even worth trying to do it myself on a longarm, or whether I should just send it to a professional for quilting. I know now that lots of people do send out their quilt tops, but there’s something about the fact that it’s a special gift that makes me feel like I want to do it myself. I’m sure I’m not alone.
Well, I never! If you’d told me 10 years ago I’d be making a quilt in 2020, I’d have split my sides on the floor laughing. Not because I’m a horrible person, but I would never have imagined myself to have the patience, interest and wherewithall to actually make such a thing. Even after I started making clothes, I regarded quilt-making as anOTHER craft. We don’t have a big quilt-making tradition in Scotland and so I saw it mostly as a charming, but quaint, American custom. I could see the appeal in theory but in practice found a lot of the quilts I saw pretty chintzy and not to my taste. Slowly, however, I became aware of modern quilting and started to see wonderful fresh (to my eyes) designs on Instagram here and there. I knew some of my favourite fabric designers, such as Carolyn Friedlander, Cotton + Steel and Ruby Star Society really dealt primarily with quilt fabrics and when I saw what quilters were producing with their fabric I started to be drawn in.
What really led me to actually making one, though, was that I planned to make a quilt to commemorate my parent’s golden wedding anniversary. I picked out a pattern and fabrics – and then realised I neither had a clue where to start, nor the necessary skills to sew such an important gift to a half-decent standard. Covid-19 arrived and during the US Presidential election week, I found myself casting around for something interesting, but not too technical, that I could do sitting in the living room, watching the news, rather than behind the sewing machine. So I came to the idea of a bright, colourful and very simple quilt. I could learn some skills and cheer myself up with the rainbow hues of Alison Glass’ Observatory Collection prints at the same time. Bingo!
Belle Citadel 