Saturday 4 January 2014

Sewing: half-square triangle ice cream quilt

I sewed an ice-cream coloured quilt. It is 2m x 2m. That's 6.7ft x 6.7ft. That's big. That's a lot of complicated work. And that, readers, is me allowing myself a bit of pride.
Each half-square triangle includes a white and an ice-cream colour. I cut out 12.5in squares from each colour, sewed them together around the edges then across on the diagonals, then cut them into four squares. I used this tutorial on making quicker HST's.
I quilted it along the diagonals in alternating ice-cream thread colours. With pink being the predominant colour, I quilted pink, yellow, green; pink, blue, purple. That's a lot of changing threads and bobbins and re-threading needles. There were several occasions when I decided I must be mad. One colour quilting thread from now on! The above picture also shows my corners/points all (or mostly all) matching up. Bit of an effort but worth it.
See that? That's the binding for you. It's scrappy, so there are different bits of pink fabric along the 8m perimeter.You can see one type of binding change for another in the picture below.
And there's the back: just white sheeting to show off the different colours of the quilting

I made this quilt as a commission for my auntie. I'm really pleased with it (can you tell?!) but I started it at Easter and sporadically sewed it right through to Christmas. With such a large quilt, I constantly needed to lay it on the floor to re-smooth, roll, or re-position it. That's not something that can be done with two small boys around who like walking on quilts! I'm glad it's done now. I have one last king-size quilt to make (my brother's), and I think I'm going to make it using a quilt-as-you-go method in order to avoid all the lay-on-the-floor logistical problems.

5 comments:

  1. Beautiful work! I love colour combo and think you did a wonderful job. I'm slowly cutting out the pieces for my first quilt, which happens to be very big. I didn't realise you could quilt-as-you-go. That sounds like it could be easier than trying to quilt the whole thing.

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    1. Oh thank you! Good luck with yours too. I've used this quilt-as-you-go (QAYG) tutorial for single-sized quilts before: http://acuppaandacatchup.com/2011/03/quilt-as-you-go-strip-quilt-tutorial/ but for my king-size quilt I'm going to be using some ideas from here: http://www.soulemama.com/soulemama/2013/03/twelve-days.html ... hope that helps!

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  2. Wow that is big, I've made one that sort of size before and quilting it nearly killed me! I hope your auntie was pleased with it!

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    1. I've made 3 quilts that size now. Possibly I'm already dead and I don't know it?! To be honest, I didn't realise when I started quilting the first one that it was unusual. When you see all those quilts on pinterest, you assume they're huge! Now I know better, but people keep requesting big-bed sizes. Oh well!

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  3. You SHOULD be proud - this is gorgeous! Love the colours, and the name!

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