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Tuesday 26 March 2013

Skyloft quilt top

I tend to work on sewing projects concurrently, rather than one at a time. As a result, it often takes me several months to complete a project (that and the fact that I work full-time). So it's a particularly satisfying feeling when I finish something.

I started this quilt top a couple of months ago, after receiving a precious metre of Liberty's Bloomsbury Virginia print for Christmas. This weekend just gone I finally finished the top. Here it is!





I used a real mix of fabrics in this quilt, which is my favourite way of working. As much as I love the ease of using a charm pack or all fabrics from the same range, it's also lovely to know that something you've made is unique because you used all sorts of things to make it. This contains three prints from that Liberty collection (Virginia in rich red blue and magenta teal, and Bell in rich red blue); African shweshwe (the bright pink one with yellow bits); at least three fabrics that are reprints from feedsack; Cath Kidston prints; and several generic polka dots I picked up as remnants.

This quilt top about a metre by a metre and a half, maybe a little more. It'll be a baby-sized one when it's quilted. I am absolutely in love with it.

I don't normally name my quilts, but I'm going to call this one Skyloft, because the colours and the feeling of motion and the flags and pinwheels put me in mind of the floating town, Skyloft, in Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword:



(For a better idea, you can watch this video, which gives you a good idea of the general breeziness and airiness of Skyloft. I'm a Zelda geek and I have no regrets, by the way!)

I rather like making pinwheel blocks, though I haven't quite perfected the art of it yet. A close-up look reveals how I can never quite get my corners lined up. Grr!




I did trim the blocks before sewing them together, which I never used to do, and which did make a big difference. Here is Agitha "helping" me trim.




Here are some prairie points (the little triangles) before being sewn on. 




And here is the edge of the quilt with prairie points. I'd forgotten how fiddly the little bastards are. Got there in the end, though.






So the next step is to find a suitable backing fabric and to quilt it. My original plan was to machine-quilt in a freeform stipple design, but now I'm wondering about quilting in a pattern that adds to the airiness and breeziness (those words again!) of the design. I'm going to have to do some doodling.

I've made a version of this design before, when my nephew Elliott was born:




This version is hand-quilted, which I like, but I'm not sure it would work with this new design. What do you think?

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