Game of Quilts - quilt made and handed over!

Thursday 6th started  early, lots to get organised and set up ready for our mammoth day of quilt making. We had been sponsored by Bernina for the machines and Wonderfil for our threads and the wadding was provided too.

Our team, "All Layered Up" was made up of six of us so that we could all have time out during the day, for sanity and to get around a little of the festival. 

Stuart Hillard, from The Great British Sewing Bee was there to set the teams off on the challenge.

Now we were ready to go. It took us a while to get into the swing, despite practicing, a strange machine and a small amount of space but we had a plan and we stuck to it! Our quilt was made up of four panels, one of which was plain with appliquéd flowers. We started here so that we would have maximum time to hand stitch the flowers and Echo quilt them.

Then it was all hands to cut and piece the blocks, each made up of three fabrics, the flowered and turquoise in all and alternating yellow and orange squares. Strip piecing helped and soon we had enough blocks to construct our first row. Kneeling on the floor or cut our wadding and backing fabric, and going to the outer reaches of the hall to apply 505 spray we were ready to layer up. These rows were then quilted. 

We had chosen the flowered quilt back so that our quilt as you go technique was almost invisible from the back. We had experimented with Wonderfil Invisifil thread to quilt and top stitch the strip joins, it worked really well and I'm going to invest in some for myself for the next quilt I start.

With the rows joined up we had the binding to make and while that was being done we added a drift of appliqué flowers to the blocks as well.

The binding was Sue's bright idea but it meant that she was needed on the machine at the end after her full day hanging quilts on the Wednesday.

Eventually, we did finish.

We did enjoy the day, we had some laughs along with the hard work, we realised that we had been our own worst enemy in going for a slightly larger size. It was in a very good cause, Birmingham Children's Hospital, and our left over fabric and wadding has gone into the Linus pot for the group who work at The Bramble Patch in Northants to use. Would we do it again, probably, for me it and a big birthday celebration meant that I saw less of the quilts and exhibitions than I would have liked, but it was my choice!