Nevaeh is my youngest son's oldest daughter and is 13, she has been through two major surgeries in her life already. The first when she was only a month old and the second when she was six. She is doing fine and hopefully will stay that way. When I asked what colour to make her quilt, all I was told was black. I just couldn't make a completely black quilt and was totally lost as to how to proceed.
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| Northcott Kensington Park border print and Northcott Shimmer |
When I saw this border print from Northcott I fell in love with it and my hope was that Nevaeh would too. It was now Nov 9th, approximately 6 weeks until Christmas, and no plan in sight. Time to open EQ8 and start designing.
I also used Kona black. The centre block is 24'' by 24''.
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| More playing with inset seams |
As if I didn't get enough inset seams making the block for the Virtual Cookie Exchange project you can read more about that here, I made four of the above blocks, what was I thinking?
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| Dec 4th and a long way to go |
Piecing this top was a priority, I wonder if the Elves feel like this at this time of year?
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| Dec 5th a completely pieced top, excuse the poor lighting |
A sense of relief, with a finished top, now on to the quilting and 20 days till Christmas, with no idea how I wanted to quilt it. I started by stitching in the ditch, and then I let the quilt start talking to me.
I kept the centre fairly simple. I outlined the bird and added some gentle curves. Straight lines radiating out from the centre and more curves.
I wanted the stars to pop so I echoed each star and in the background, I quilted small loop de loops and stars.
The black side borders I quilted feathers and the border print got straight lines spaced at an inch and a half.
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| the quilt required two holder uppers and of course, the wind was blowing |
Binding and quilting were finished on Dec 21st, after more than 45 hours of quilting all on my domestic machine. I was one happy grandma!!
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| the back shows the quilting. My daughter helped hold it up |
The quilt finished at 100 inches long by 90 inches wide. I think she was happy with her quilt.
