Beginnings and finishings

Finishing first! My scrappy doodles quilt started at the workshop with Sheena Norquay is now finished!

How do I feel about it? Well, of course, like many others, I can only see the mistakes when I look at

 something I've made, but I have to say that I am quite pleased with how it's turned out.

The idea behind the quilting is a good one and one I shall use again, but it will take a bit of planning to get it right on a bigger piece. Drawing inspiration from the actual patterns on the fabric is a good starting point, but in order to make the quilting blend, I think I would need to actually draw the designs out first, partly to get them in my head. but also to see how different designs will blend together.

The close ups of the quilting are shown below. As with any design process, it's a matter of choice how you interpret a pattern  and bring it out. So now that I've done them, I can see all sorts of other designs I could have used instead and so the next one I make will be different.

This exercise has given the phrase "quilt as desired" a whole new meaning. In fact it does seem that having done the piecing or putting together the quilt top many of us simply blob out of the quilting altogether. How do you decide what thread to use, what patterns to use, how dense the quilting should be? This is what fascinates me about this craft and the more I do, the less I know I know, if that makes sense.

In our village back in August, a local group called Kernow Quilters held their exhibition. There were a lot of quilts on show, many of which were beautifully made, but most had almost no visible quilting at all, and those that did were mostly stitched in the ditch or with simple straight lines. It seems that for most of these people, the patchwork was the most important bit and the quilting, well......

Now I think I can safely call myself a quilter, because for me, the quilting is the most important part and is what should bring the thing to life.

And so to the beginnings! On Tuesday, I went along to a meeting with the Trevithick Quilters who meet in Camborne. Not exactly on my doorstep, but unlike the groups who meet near me, they seemed a very welcoming and friendly group. They are very much a traditional patchwork group, but at least one  of the members attended the Sheena Norquay workshop, and after talking to them, it seems that, like me, they just don't know where to start when it comes to the quilting. Perhaps we will make a start on the search for ideas to our mutual benefit. I hope so.

They are having an exhibition this weekend and they have asked me to put my little pieces on show. So now I've got to get hanging sleeves done before I can move onto the next project. What that will be, is a bit uncertain so watch this space!