A Patchwork of Crafts: From cover to quilt

The first piece of patchwork I shared on this blog was made about 28 years ago as a quilt cover. a-matter-of-perception. Regrettably, the basis of the cover to stop the gifted "quilt" from slipping never did really work. And as the little polyester inner quilt deteriorated, and bunched it was making me rather sad.

I decided I would try taking the cover apart and quilting it, with my grandmothers gift as the wadding (batting). Regrettably I had left that too late, the bunching was not recoverable and I had to give that idea up.

Then I decided I would use an old fleece blanket that has rather lost its original adorable softness but was still nice and warm.

Happily the blanket was plenty big enough to do the job.

I have never used a different filling for my quilting sandwich before.

Flatter, yet heavier is was odd quilting it. I did that by hand and kept to a simple sew in the furrow around the dark diamonds. As I worked I remembered that I had made a mistake with the logcabin blocks. I had sewn a few backwards, and by the time I noticed the idea of restarting my hand sewn blocks was awful. So I did not, I just did half one way and half the other. It changed the shape of the finished sets and influences the overall design.

It was rather pleasant remembering as I was sewing. I also recalled that whilst collecting the material for this patchwork the grey materials were the tricky bits. I had just started work and the manager was giving a talk to all the staff, and my first thought was his hair was the exact shade of grey I was looking for. I mentioned this to a colleague in passing some time later..the response, "well I have heard of come to bed eyes but never bedspread hair!" Took some time to live that one down.

Having hand sewn the patchwork portion in the middle I moved on the the edge. It felt a bit wide to just leave, yet I was not sure what to do considering the Flaming Pearls and the dragons on the corners.

I opted for straight lines and the chance to use a new foot I had bought which is to help get an even distance between stitches.

It worked very well and any wobbles to the lines were a reflection of the original wobbly edges of the quilt.

The corners required sewing up to the dragons, stopping, leaving a length of thread for finishing then making a new start at the other side.

When it came to the binding I used the double over and sew and fold method my BFF introduced me to. I was drawn to some material in my stash that had wide stripes of purple fading to lilac and back (which alternated with a pale teal with purple flowers on it) It would be easy to just cut off the purple stripes and use them I thought. Although why this shades of purple appealed I did initially recognise.

It was as I sewed it, continually looking at it (well except when looking at pretty things) that I realised it contained all the shades from my grandmothers gift, it had been large purple tea roses on a very very light background. Over the years, even though it was mainly in its cover, washings and drying on the line had faded it, lightening out those purple roses to ever lighter shades till they were almost invisible.

I like that there are memories in the colour of the binding. Now it is almost finished, how almost? Well it needs a label. I have been trying to do labels for all new quilts and add labels to the quilts still in my possession since the concept of labels occurred to me.

So what to call this new yet old quilt, what to say on a label. How to encapsulate all of the memories, emotions and journeys it represents onto one little label. I am giving that some thought (feel free to add any suggestions in the comments) and whilst I think here it is in is new incarnation.