SWOON Quilt

At long last I have finished this huge quilt!  And I love it!  I have blogged about piecing the top of this quilt back in April and May if you're interested in the finer points, but otherwise, here are lots of photos of my finished quilt!  All indoors today due to the rain.

This is Swoon on the same bed that is in my blog header, my sewing room

Swoon fits quite nicely on the double bed!

Taken from up the stairwell.

Sheltering under the porch.

I used the pink Country Girls fabric for the back too.

As part of the fabric collection four of the prints
are on a white background, which would be
difficult to incorporate into a star block, so I used
two of the white fat quarters for the binding!

The details

The pattern is called Swoon by Thimbleblossoms
The fabric is called Country Girls by Tasha Noel

As part of Katy's Finish-Along I had hoped to finish seven things this quarter of the year, but alas I only finished two, but they are two that I am very pleased with.

Getting over disappointment

At the quilters I asked for a coordinating thread colour to be used for each block, with a flower stitched within the central star and arches from every corner of the outer petal shapes, and the white background was supposed to be filled with swirling feathers. What I paid for and received is not exactly what I asked for, but it is not worth causing a fuss so I have struggled to just get used to what I have been given and try to just love it for what it is right now, not what I had envisioned.  It has taken a couple of weeks to get over the disappointment, at which I just had it tucked away, then I was able to do the binding by keeping it scrunched up next to the machine and by keeping most of it in it's bag whilst I just stitched on a bit of binding at a time.
Today I finally laid it out flat for these photos and now know that I do love it again and am going to just not think about my vision for the quilting side of it.
This quilt is not going into a competition or a show or anything, it is meant to bring joy to whoever is snuggled up inside it, and I think it will do just that.

And now for the close-ups!

Still Swooning

Just a further update on my Swoon patchwork blocks, last time I wrote about them I had finished 5 out of 9, (you can see them by clicking here.)  Here are the final four ready to be sashed together... once I decide on the layout.  I really like this one with the red petals.

But then this one with the red as the star shape is quite striking to look at too.

I was so confident with this next one that I thought I could make these blindfolded, but alas, this is the one that needed the most unpicking.  I tried to get all the ducks up the same way, but it was not to be.  Most of the ducks in the bottom left and bottom right petals are facing all sorts of directions!

I have saved the best til last: pink combined with green is my favourite combination!

I have enjoyed cutting and sewing these immensely.  Such satisfying sewing, with a completed block fairly achievable after a couple of sessions. Next step will be to add some white borders and sew them all together.  I think I will do free-motion quilting on this at Beechwood, in Stirling again.
I have absolutely NO IDEA where I am going to keep this huge quilt when it's finished, but I do know that I will definitely be keeping it.

Swoon Worthy Sewing

I have been enjoying some simple sewing lately, a great thing to do if you only have a small window of time in the evenings.  I do the cutting out in one evening and lay out all my squares and rectangles on my ironing table ready for the next evening, when I pull my sewing machine closer and get on with the sewing!  My workspace looks a bit like this at the moment, with lots of little clipped triangles that escaped the bin.

Here's Mr Bingley, jumping onto my chair
as soon as I'm up!

The patchwork block pattern that I've been tinkering away at is called Swoon, designed by Camille Roskelley at Thimbleblossoms.

  

Each of the star/flower blocks take two fat quarters of fabric as well as some background fabric.  Above is the first one that I made, I tried to cut out the little girls carefully so as not to decapitate any of them.  My second attempt went okay too, just a few houses and trees on their side, but at least the little ladies are safe and well.

  

The fabric is a Fat Quarter bundle I bought from Westwood Acres, a US online store.  The cute little prints are part of a collection called Country Girls designed by Tasha Noel who writes a blog called A Little Sweetness.

  

The third and fifth ones were a bit easier, inside the checkerboard print there were occasionally some words that I had to try my best to keep up the correct way, which I think I managed.

  

Each of these blocks are 24" square, and there will be nine of them altogether, so the final quilt will be quite large when it is finished.

  

So that is five made so far, including today's one - made with Mr Bingley's "help."