Quilts

I’m finding all sorts of treasure as I unpack the boxes in my work room.

These are quilts I made around 15 years ago, mostly with commercial cotton fabric scraps.

glorious colour

All are hand-pieced and hand-quilted, made using the quilt-as-you-go (QAYG) method. This is where you piece, layer and quilt each block separately and then join all the blocks together. There are lots of QAYG tutorials online if you’re not familiar with it.

quilts

This block made me smile:

number 24

Made in the first house I owned and rediscovered during the second week in our new house, the number of which happens to be… 24. Not only that, but the little yellow flowers next to it suggest spring. Maybe I was seeing my own future. Spooky!

Quilt-as-you-go gives you the opportunity to use up larger scraps for the back of the blocks, rather than having to wrestle with a large piece of backing fabric. I never have enough floor space for that, so I prefer this more portable method. The backs of these 7″ quilt blocks are all different:

quilt back

Nice to find this little burst of colour on what’s been a grey overcast day.

Author: Karen

Textile and mixed media artist

25 thoughts on “Quilts”

  1. Lovely! And then how do you sew the qayg blocks together so seamlessly? (asking for a friend 😉)

    1. There are lots of tutorials online for QAYG. Basically you join the tops, the middles and the backs.

  2. I like this approach much more than the wrestle with the big pieces idea. I’ve never quilted though I’ve done a lot of hand sewing and embroidery. Trapunto is like quilt stitching. Thank you for the idea

    1. I’ve not done trapunto but yes I imagine it’s similar. A big quilt becomes very unwieldy from the beginning whereas QAYG lets you tackle it in manageable bits and build it up gradually.

  3. Now THIS seems to be the kind of quilting I can wrap my head around! (And how I can machine quilt with a 1950s Singer Featherweight!) Thanks for the inspiration!

  4. Lovely quilt, and by using nice squares of fabric as backing, you have a truly reversible quilt. 🙂

  5. Beautiful quilts and always so lovely to see hand quilting and piecing.

  6. Love your quilting! I purchased two of Georgia Bonesteel’s books when they were firs published thinking I would follow her instructions on Lap Quilting but it didn’t work for me. Cats. LOL.

  7. I can’t comment through your actual page so doing this through WordPress reader. A lovely rediscovery. I’m sure there are plenty more!

    1. Ah, sorry you can’t comment via the blog – I have no idea why that might be. But yes, it’s been lovely to rediscover some of the treasures.

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