Hibernation

Hibernation: the condition or period of an animal or plant spending the winter in a dormant state. 

Whilst I have spent Jan, Feb and March hibernating indoors in the warmth I haven't been totally dormant, I have been making lap quilts. It all started here continued here and now I have these........

Twelve, and one that I gave to my friend who gave me the material 

It's hard to believe that this stash has produced so many quilts. I bought extra small amounts of contrasting material for some of them for borders to make up to the specified size of 36" x 36".

This started with the square block in the centre, and then building up with bits as I went along. 
I bought the white material on the left for filling in and the border. 
You can't see it in the photo but it has a pretty floral pattern on it.
There are three that I really like and my WI ladies agree that it would be ok for me to keep one. 
This one above is one of the three.

I bought the pink material for this border

it was fun to make and it didn't take very long,  everything just went together

There was even plenty left over for the binding.

I asked my friend if she would like one of the quilts as she gave me all the material. 
This is the one she chose. 

It started as a single long piece.

which I cut in half to make 2 pieces that I joined together using mostly the green border material and the other bits on the left of the picture. I forgot to take a picture of it finished. 
I think I put a bright yellow fleece on the back.

I thought I would try something different with these pieces.

diamond shapes. 

There weren't enough for the size I needed so I cut the edges from two sides 
and attached them to the other two sides. 
I also made a wide border.

The material in the top left of the picture is a bland green and white stripe 

but there was enough colour in the other squares to turn it into a pretty quilt. 

This is the second one I really like.

This is the third one I like

A friend gave me a huge amount of plain navy material which was invaluable for making this one. 

After watching various Youtube tutorials I wanted to try a stripey pattern.

 and these bits of material lent themselves perfectly, particularly as you need various lengths. 

I ordered a roll of this quilting paper which was 12" wide 
all I had to do was measure and cut to make 9 x 12" squares

I bought a quarter metre of the lovely turquoise material at the top.
The strips of material are sewn onto the quilting paper, 
it's just like baking paper or tracing paper but a bit stronger. 
It makes sewing the strips together much easier.

Notice the Flora tub, my bespoke scrap bin :-)

Once all the strips are sewn on turn over and cut off the excess.

tear the paper off, this paper comes away very easily

arrange the squares into a pattern or random. 

Yet another Youtube tutorial (isnt' it great, I couldn't have done any of this without it) 

talked about signing your work, so I set about making labels.

Collage courtesy of https://www.befunky.com

Cut a piece of material to shape of choice; waxed freezer paper; cut freezer paper slightly larger than material; iron material onto wax side of paper; write message on material; I printed my message using a nice font then used a book light to trace it onto the material because my hand writing isn't as nice. Peel off wax paper and sew on.

this was the first one I did for my daughter's quilt

for the WI ones I have put my name and my WI group

Nearly there, are you still awake? Sorry for the long post. I want to get it all done!

And finally the last and most difficult one

After making all those quilts I was still left with a fair amount of material and some pieces that people had gifted along the way. My plan was to do one large square starting with pale 

and working through the spectrum of the colours I had. 

I ironed it after adding each layer, after getting this far I noticed this - can you see that faint pink mark? Red colour had run from my ironing board cover!!! 
This has never happened in the 5 years I've had it. 
I tried washing it but it was set and I couldn't ignore it so the only thing I could do was to unpick it and replace it with a strip of the pale blue material.
I then carried on adding layer after layer until it was finished.

I wanted to use up my up stash of leftover pieces of fleece. My plan was to create a fan of rainbow colours and I hoped that arranging them on the diagonal would give me a bit more mileage. It was difficult and involved a lot of measuring, placing in position, fitting onto the quilt, re-placing, re-measuring, re-fitting and a huge small amount of expletives.

Because there were so many seams it was quite bulky when I put fleece and quilt together. 

In my stash was a piece of wadding that was just the right size. 

The fleece wasn't 100% the right size, one corner is a bit of a mess but it will have to do.
I will never do a fleece backing like this again, NEVER.

All I have to do now is decide which one to keep before 
we hand them over to the Project Linus co-ordinator.

Thank you for reading/speeding/skipping through or just looking at the pictures :-)

The garden and decorating the dining room are my next two projects! 

Meanwhile it's time to get ready for my WI meeting

PS I'm going to make a quilt for my daughter in Australia, 
she's very specific about what she wants - a red geometric pattern
it might take a while to find the right material.

~Be warm and well ~

Polly x