Traditional Quilt Group

When Rosemary gave me the drawings of the lovespoons, she asked for – a sampler, using as many different techniques as possible, an attic window setting and accessible to a beginner. It was up to me how many of the designs I used and how I set them.

The idea was a quilt about the same size – possibly slightly larger than Jacquie Harvey‟s lovely one last year – and I have to say that it was very daunting to be following Jacquie. I had thoroughly enjoyed making her quilt – and I do not make any claim to be in her class in terms of workmanship or experience.

I began by listing as many techniques as I could come up with; the only ones I felt I couldn‟t make work for this were kantha and sashiko – not that I‟ve ever done kantha, but I‟d never made my own bias for Celtic either, nor the technique for the coloured spoon… nor invisible appliqué… In part this made me apply techniques I‟d wanted to try, but simply hadn‟t had the opportunity or impetus before. Some of the designs were immediately more suited to some techniques; others proved to be so on experimentation. I should say now that I‟m not a City and Guilds student, and that my quilts have a way of evolving, led by the fabric. I prefer quilting a whole top to quilt-as-you-go – so that was another of my decisions.

I also decided that it would be more interesting if the spoons were different sizes; the designs lend themselves to this, although it did make the final construction challenging. When you make a quilt yourself it is easy to go with the flow and see what happens; making it to write up for others to work was a daunting responsibility – even though my working years included constructing worksheets and lesson plans.

I began to play with the blocks before determining the number of instalments – I wanted to see how long they took and what was feasible to complete in a month. The result was that for each of the first four months you get a block that requires some work – appliqué or similar – and one that merely needs to be drawn out and put into the window setting for later working in detail. The different sizes of the block meant that they were never going to go together evenly – but I felt that this was a wonderful opportunity to add some glorious Welsh quilting designs. Making Welsh Quilts by Mary Jenkins and Clare Claridge was in my library from a trip to York, and I found it fascinating and clear to use. I hope that people who make this quilt will enjoy the motifs, and agree that they add to the quilt. These are in what I‟ve called filler sections or panels, which are added into the quilt top in the construction process in the fifth month. I love hand quilting and believed members of the TQG would too – so I included the borders – Triple Welsh Trail. I hate „quilt as you like‟- it feels like a cop-out!

I did each block at least twice, - once to see how the techniques looked in the design – and that had to be done as I went along! It was no good waiting until the whole top was assembled to find that something didn‟t work. Thus I did a quilt-as-you-go AND the quilt as per the instructions. Some blocks needed changing. The two quilts are different colours – the "real" one I agonised over for two or three weeks, „auditioning‟ fabrics; the other I pulled from the shelves some old fabric that had no future – and guess which my friends preferred as the work was in progress. (I hoped this was because the second set was showing a „finished‟ effect rather than a reflection of my colour sense!)

I have given the dimensions each month for the attic windows and the background fabric; these can be changed. I do hope that some people will use this as an opportunity to set out their quilt in a different way – but it does need to be done on graph paper. My „second‟ quilt is designed for my daughter‟s stairs and has some very strange inserts – but the same Welsh quilting motifs, except where they are too narrow. The aim was not to produce a strait jacket but a chance to play; I have enjoyed making up the sampler – and making myself try new techniques; I really hope members will find it as much of a pleasure.

It is now eight months since our instructive and interesting course with Lillian Hedley in the Guild headquarters in York. We left full of enthusiasm and good intentions, so I thought it was time to see how we had actually got on and if progress on our individual masterpieces had occurred.

As you might imagine some of us were much more diligent than others and an emailed request for an update turned up an interesting mix of replies that included silence, apologies and examples of work in progress.

Given that we left York armed with reams of greaseproof paper containing our designs in various stages of near completion, the task ahead of us was not trivial. One of the first steps was to complete our pencil outline designs and then turn them over and ink them in. For some of us creating a whole cloth quilt there was the additional challenge of adding the borders to a central design – I must confess it was the thought of manipulating all this crinkly pa-per in a confined space that lead to my designs languishing on the top of my quilting cupboard for the rest of the year. The strippy quilt makers had the trial of managing long lengths of design. Then of course came the onerous task of auditioning and choosing material and threads – and we all know how long that process can take! Once chosen the designs then had to be copied onto the fabric us-ing a soft pencil, before it could be sandwiched and basted prior to starting the hand quilting.

Congratulations to Jean who has made excellent progress saying, "Well, I‟m a bit of a clever clogs and have got cracking on mine. All this snow was excellent for quilting and I got the whole of the cen-tre finished." To encourage us all there is a picture of her com-pleted centre and another of a strippy quilt made for her daughter-in-law who is ill.

Rosemary has admitted that her quilt is still in the design stage but has progressed to the „to do‟ pile. She is not alone, Chris who found the course informative and Lillian inspirational, is also at the design stage, admitting that having builders in since July creating dust, havoc as well as restricting access to her sewing room may have something to do with her lack of progress. She does say that perhaps by the time you read this everything will be back in shape. "Then I will be able to pick up where I left off, completing the tracings and finding some lovely fabric to work on," she says.

Shelagh has chosen pale green and white for her 90" long strippy. "All nine strips are cut out and the design is marked on two of the strips, but I haven‟t yet put a stitch in," she says. I was smitten by guilt and the thought of having to photograph a pile of fabric, my tracings and some good intentions. So one snowy after-noon, I bribed my son with television and left over Christmas goodies and set to work. After two and a half days I‟m delighted to say that I now have the start of a whole cloth quilt, which will be my Friday hand sewing project for 2010. Most Fridays during the year I meet with a small group of friends and we encourage each other in our quilting endeavours – as well as put the world to rights. 2010 is the year of the whole cloth quilt for me.