2011 Retrospective: The Picnic Quilt

I wasn't blogging in 2011 so I am taking the liberty of sharing some of my previous projects.

Insanely, I undertook my biggest project of 2011 when Treacle was only four weeks old. I really wanted to make my best friend a very personal wedding present and had a jelly roll I really liked stashed away so even though I knew I really didn't have the time, I decided to go ahead and try my hand at a quilt. All of this was only possible because S showed his love for my friend and her new husband by taking care of the kids and chores while I worked on their present!

I have made baby quilts before but knew I didn't have time for a double-bed size or anything intricate so I went for a picnic size quilt using easy-to-assemble blocks. I used the Pandora's Box pattern in Jelly Roll Quilts by Pam Lintott and Nicky Lintott. The pattern dictates five blocks by eight blocks so to make it more picnic sized, and accomodate the fact that my jelly roll was a little smaller than the pattern expects, I made it just five blocks square. The final quilt size is around 52 inches square.

I picked up the jelly roll in Masons some time ago and unfortunately I have no recollection of the design or manufacturer! I backed the quilt with a solid salmon pink to match, and made binding from a coordinating green. 

My cutting wasn't great so I sought advice on squaring up my blocks before joining them together. I went with the freezer paper method. It did produce a much more "square" quilt top than I would otherwise have been left with but it took so much effort to remove the paper I don't think I'll be doing it again in a hurry. Accuracy with my cutting and stitching would be a better solution!

Again, due to lack of time and experience I decided not to stitch this quilt and opted to tie instead. This involved taping the backing fabric to the floor, layering on the wadding and the quilt top and pinning the layers together with safety pins. Once the pins were in place I used cream embroidery thread to make small single stitches that I knotted off. I spaced the stitches well apart. I was quite relieved when that was done and I could sit at my sewing machine to attach the binding to the front and then collapse on the sofa to hand finish the binding on the back.