Well, the summer has certainly gone and as the nights are drawing in, I shall take up my favourite indoor hobby... quilting! I am currently making my 6th quilt but have several other ideas rattling around in my head for wallhangings. I am thinking about a Jessie King/Margaret and Frances Macdonald inspiration being a lover of Arts and Crafts, after a recent visit to an exhibition in Kirkudbright of The Glasgow Girls. In particular, the illustrations for the book Seven Happy Days (below left) inspire me greatly. I love the colours she used and the details picked out in silver and gold.
I started quilting seriously 3 years ago. Made my first quilt (below, top) from fabrics from over 20 years collecting them and storing them in the loft. (The rafters sighed with relief when we had the loft conversion!) The quilt measures 50" square and took 3 months to complete - it was made entirely by hand! It's so cosy that I decided to make another, slightly bigger (below, bottom) which was completed June 2008 and took 4 months. This one measures 55" square. And uses pretty much the same fabrics as the first, so they go together. Both quilts hang on the back of my sofas in the living room, ready to snuggle up under on those chilly evenings, before the central heating is switched back on! (hmm this weekend!)
A couple of quilts later and it's the kids' turn. I started the next quilt when my daughter was a baby, and I'm ashamed to say, finished it just after her 11th birthday! In 1998 I joined a 10 week quilting course where I learned basic blocks and quilting methods and started making grandmother's fans, like there was no tomorrow! But, bringing up a young family (I was a 'stay at home mum') and all the distractions that come with that, I put them away and forgot about them. Every few months I would come across them in my new workroom - created after the loft conversion - where I hid when I had a spare minute, and added a few more different blocks until one of the kids found me! A few years later, I was surfing the internet for something 'sewy' to do and came across quilting again, in particular American quilting sites. and slowly got hooked. I dug out the bits and pieces added a few strips and started to join the whole thing together. To be honest, I sickened myself with it as I was a few blocks short, it didn't seem to be going anywhere and I thought it was another one of those projects I started, got bored with and left. (I have many of these, mostly cross stitch pieces which although I'm very pleased with, never seem to get to the framing stage!) Anyway, with my new found confidence after making the first two, and the amount of pride I felt after actually completing them, I decided to finish the quilt in 2009- 11 years after it began! My biggest (longest) project to date! And it has a name, 'Emily's Memories' so called as it is made up of lot of fabrics of dresses she wore (and I made), and pictures of many of her favourite things. It is also the biggest so far at 72" square. Some of the blocks have stencilled designs in the centre and some are paper pieced.The quilting (by hand) took about 3 months in total. It hangs on the end of her bed and she loves it! I hope it will be an heirloom for her to pass down.
