18 September 2012

A Favourite Quilt

With spring here, it was time to pack away my winter quilt and put on the bed a softer, lighter coloured one.  And this is one of my favourites, with lots of dreamy, faded fabrics in both linen and cotton and a few feedsack fabrics thrown into the mix too.  This one is called Faded Secrets.


The quilt had an interesting beginning as I had set out to make an advent calender.  I had carefully chosen all the fabrics from my stash ready to make little advent pockets, but when I saw the collection of fabrics all over the table I loved it so much I wanted it to become a quilt, not just something we brought out once a year.

It is a very simple grid of 11 x 11 squares, of 5 inches.  I love squares so much, but when it came time to quilt it, I wanted something a bit different, to make these quaint fabrics a little more contemporary and had the idea of quilting in circles all over it.   And I think I set a record with this one, because I hand quilted it in 28 days - obviously nothing else got done in those days between April and June of 2010!



On the border I quilted in diamonds, and when I had finished, I calculated that the quilt had approximately 13,860 hand-quilted stitches in it.

The backing fabric of stripes was rather expensive, so rather than buying enough to cover the entire back, I patched that too.  The binding fabric was a gift from a friend's stash, she no longer wanted, and the feedsack fabric was also a gift from a friend, so I have lots of lovely memories of friendships sewn into the quilt.

 
I love that within this quilt there are sheep and little houses, and girls tucked up in bed.  There are red roses and little cottages and the Eiffel Tower.  I love to run my hands over all those stitches and dream about the little girl in bed and wonder if she has been to Paris and seen the Eiffel Tower, and whether the roses have been painted red by a pack of cards and who lives in those sweet little cottages with the blue trees in the yard.
 
 
Enough, I'm rambling now and this post is just covering up the fact that I don't have anything new to share with you today!!
 
Hope you're enjoying your Tuesday.
Trudy
 
 
 

11 comments:

  1. Your quilt is really lovely,but made me smile as I have only made one quilt but it is top of my emergency post list.

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  2. I love those faded fabrics. Did you scour charity shops for them or can you buy them 'ready faded'?
    Penny
    x

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    1. Hi Penny, no the fabrics didn't come from charity shops, just my stash!! I chose fabrics which had the appearance of faded, old fabrics (and a couple of them were old feedsack fabrics).

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  3. This is truly beautiful! I hope one day I can create something like this! Ada :)

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  4. I love the pale Spring palate of your quilt, and the way all the different fabrics tell a story. The circles are so unusual. I assumed you'd done them on a machine but they are hand quilted! Beautiful.

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  5. I love your quilt! Gorgeous fabrics and WOW! all that hand quilting! Really lovely!
    Karen x x

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  6. Such a lovely quilt - you are so talented.

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  7. It's new to me! And that quilt is awesome, I am totally in awe of your talents! I really must make me a quilt, I've done cot quilts but never something this size ... all those little quilting stitches, wow!

    This is a lovely post Trudy :D

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  8. Beautiful quilt Trudy, i just love it,..
    Pixie xx

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  9. I love this quilt. The faded vintage colours are gorgeous and you have such patience to hand quilt it all. Beautiful! xx

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  10. This is a lovely post Trudy and Quilt, lovely that you can see little stories in it!

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