DWR Finish



the sun's shining through which is why you can the see the 2 tone effect of the backing

 This quilt started life in May 2010 when I cut out all the pieces ready to take with me when my husband and I went West.  I used a template from Matilda's Own which has handy little 'holes' so you can mark where the joins need to be - I found these invaluable.

We had decided to go from Somerville, Victoria to Margaret River, Western Australia so we hitched up the camper trailer and spent the next 4 weeks camping across the bottom of Oz, through South Australia, along the Nullabor Plain and into the Great South area of WA - Esperance, Albany then onto Margaret River.  All up we travelled some 8,000 kms.  We had a fantastic time and saw some beautiful places - what a land of contrasts we live in - and I kept a journal - this is the cover:

I traced and embroidered the lower part of the Australian coastline onto a piece of my hand dyed fabric (except Tassie - sorry Kathy!) I then embroidered 2 lines to represent where we stopped - the red line is going to Margaret River and the blue line, coming home

While we were away, I completed about 3 'melons' - I can't sew while in the car (I get carsick - have done since I was little) so I only got out the sewing if we stayed longer than 2 days and only then if there wasn't anything to explore.




A 'melon' is the eye shape - 4 of them together make up the 'ring'

 Most of the fabrics for the rings is Kaffe Fassett and the white is a quilters muslin by Emma Louise in vanilla - it has the softest feel and the needle goes through it like a hot knife through butter.

This quilt could then have sat in the UFO box but I had a chance to join a little group of quilters at the local community house.  This group, quite a bit older than me, is fantastic - we don't take sewing machines as there's not a great deal of room, so I took the DWR along and just kept stitching.  Everyone was so encouraging and before long I was joining melons to make the rings.  Then I joined the rings.

I decided on a 5 x 6 combo - but later decided to do another row so it finished 5 x 7.  I machine sewed the back together (just 2 pieces of fabric, so one long seam) and put it all on the long-arm to baste, in preparation for hand quilting.  Hand quilting was a simple stitch in the ditch around all rings and melons using quilters thread, then a stencilled heart in the middle of the rings using perle no.8.

Lastly, some hand-dyed fabric that should have been red, but finished orange (must read the maunfacturers instructions again) was made into 'proper' binding and it was hand stitched on - and I finished hand stitching it down last night.

Given it's been a long time in the making and I have pets, I put it into a pillow case and threw it into the washing machine on a delicate setting - so it's on the line now, drying - hence these pictures.

I'm really happy how it turned out - the colours glow (that's Kaffe for you) - and I still can't quite beleive I hand stitched a large quilt.

I will make another of these, in different clours and probably with solid arcs instead of the pieced arcs, and I'll make it bigger - but I think next time I'll sew it by machine.