10 NICU Quilts

Back in August 2015 I finished the quilt top for the Moda Modern Building Blocks. It was ginormous measuring at least 2.5 on one edge. This August, August 2020 during the Auckland only 19 day Level 3 lockdown I got 10 small NICU quilts quilted and bound. Ta-da! (Nine make a better collage.)

I am no machine quilter - generally I find it very stressful. I found it quite calming on these small quilts that easily fit into and under my little Bernette. Every quilt is cross hatched apart from one. And that one taught me that cross hatching is way more forgiving than straightline quilting! The whole process taught me that hand quilting hides many more sins than machine quilting - where a slight waver to get from one block of the quilt to the next stands out! I did love that machine quilting sped the job up enormously. It probably took about three hours to 505 baste, quilt and then bind each little quilt. I hand sewed the back of the binding down. 

It feels good to have the quilt top off the 'in progress' page and onto the 'quilts' page. I look forward to passing these over at our next in-person gathering of Monday Modern ... whenever that may be.

A Saturday Quilt

Today I felt like sewing.

I had 3 of Helen's fat quarters left so I decided to make another charity quilt. I got the idea for this one from Sunday Morning Quilts. It was a great opportunity to get rid of fabrics I am a bit sick of ... all of those Denyse Schmidt prints that came out at least 3 years ago. And I took the opportunity to use some scraps I acquired last year when our Monday Modern group did a scrap swap.

I think I will place a moratorium on buying any more blue or green fabric for a while. It's time for a change.

Binding the Herringbone Quilt

I felt very 'Pride and Prejudice' sitting in the ballroom at Highwic binding my quilt on Sunday morning. (I quite like the idea of living during that time. Then or with the Ingalls family in their Little House on the Prairie. Or with the Waltons on Waltons' Mountain.)

It's not a particularly well-balanced quilt. I decided the quilt was too narrow, so added an extra row and by then I had used up a couple of the fat quarters so I had to introduce a new one. Pretty sure the unbalancedness won't affect the snuggliness. I do like the backing and the blue binding. Job done.

I should get on with finishing the tree quilt and quilting the red hexagons at some stage. But it's almost the end of term and I am trying to get my marking finished before the holidays!

Quilting the Herringbone

I started basting this (old school style with safety pins) so I could start hand quilting it during my stint as chief question answerer at our exhibition, but things didn't go as planned.

I thought I might as well try machine quilting it. So I ruled 1.5" from each lengthwise seam. If I had more skill, I would like to have quilted it along the herringbone lines.

The backing is a $6 Spotlight special called Gumboot Garden. It was inches too narrow, so I added a strip of purple sketch. (I am not a fan of pieced backings.)

It is my best machine quilting to date ... not that there is much to compare it to and it is only straight lines. But this time there are no puckers anywhere, my stitch length is nice and even and the tension on the back is pretty good. What I like best is two hours of work versus about one month! If I could machine quilt for real, I could make loads more quilts.

Low Volume Herringbone

This is the result of raiding Helen's stash -

I am annoyed that I didn't spread out the pretty pink floral better and that close to the centre I have two fabrics the same. Grrr.

I got the idea from this lovely quilt when I googled 'low volume quilts'. It wasn't what I had planned at all - I was thinking about a 'plus' quilt. I can't find the tutorial I used, but my take on it was to cut 4.5" x 11" rectangles and then angle each short end to 60 degrees. It used between 7 and 8 fat quarters. 

The next step is to square it up and baste it for quilting. Given the short deadline (start of Nov) and my lack of free weekends between now and then, and my already planned holidays, I may be forced to machine quilt it. Yuk.

Raiding Helen's Stash

A couple of Mondays ago Helen brought along her leftover shop stash to our Modern Monday group. We were able to help ourselves from a massive collection of fat quarters from which we are to make a quilt each to be given to cold children.

I am keen to try something low volume. I really like the quilts Linda makes. So with some help from Linda (so I didn't choose my same old, same old colours) I chose the following fabrics:

I have cut them into parallelograms:

Next step, sewing it all back together. You can see what some of the others in our group are up to with their charity quilts here: Megan, Jacqui and Linda.

Our group's first exhibition is happening very soon at Highwic House in Newmarket, Auckland. It runs from Wednesday September 18 through to Sunday 29th (the first weekend of the school hols). Free parking ... always a bonus in Auckland. If you want to know more, I found this article. We had a bit of a see what we've got a month or so ago and it was lovely to see quilts that were made before our group existed.