It was a really effective way to create contrast between the geometric strips of the patchwork and the organic flowing lines of the stencilling. That central part of the quilt was free motion quilted with a continuous vermicelli pattern and finished at the outer edges with contour quilting.

I think this will be a really useable, decorative quilt to have at home and after it’s already spent too long in the unfinished pile, I want a quick result.

After the end of the video workshop session, there was still a fair bit of quilting to do, mostly in the pieced areas. I’ve opted to work concentric straight line stitching onto these pieced blocks. It’s a very quick and easy technique if you have an even feed (walking) foot attachment for your machine.

As you can see, I’ve used a fresh limey green thread for this. It’s fun to notice how the stitched lines appear more or less obvious as the line of stitching travels across the differently coloured scraps. Using a consistent colour of thread to quilt a scrap quilt can really help with unifying your project colour scheme.

You might remember this little scrap quilt that I made a while ago. It featured in the video workshop Strippy Scrappy: Quilting the Spaces. That workshop is still available to watch and I’ve linked to it below if you’d like to check it out.

In the video I demonstrated how to use a stencil to create the leafy design in the centre of the quilt and how some simple fabric painting picked out the details of the leaves and berries.

The plan was to hand quilt the pieced blocks using hand dyed, cotton threads but somehow the quilt got put to one side and was never finished! We have to make lots of projects for our workshops and from time to time we can’t keep up with finishing them all. Inevitably some get set aside for a rainy day.

This week I unearthed it from a pile of unfinished projects and I still have the lovely threads I picked out to quilt it with. I still intend to add hand quilting because those threads are too good a match for the colour palette to ignore, however in a mad burst of activity yesterday afternoon I’ve opted for Plan B when it comes to most of the quilting. There’s no stitch police saying you can’t change your mind is there?

I think the square spiral quilting contrasts quite nicely with the freeform vermicelli and contour quilting that’s in the central section.

Now all that’s left are the plain turquoise patches. I think they’ll be the perfect place for a few more leafy shapes quilted with those gorgeous hand dyed threads! Sounds like a great stitching activity for spending time in the garden over the next week or two if the sun can be persuaded to shine! I’ll be sure to show you how the finished quilt turns out.

Thanks for reading.

Back soon,
Linda