Pleated Tulips

I’ve made another quilt as part of my quilting ‘stretch’ project this time using the block from Sherri at A Quilting Life’s mystery block a month. As I said then I don’t know if I’ll manage to make a quilt a month, but I won’t really know unless I try…

And as I said in my recent Quilty Update I’ve realised that this stretch project is dominating my sewing, so I need to work out how to change that so I stand a chance of achieving more of the quilts and other projects on my list. Small steps and all that, but as you’ll have seen I’ve finally made myself a dress, so there’s some hope!

I’m trying not to beat myself up too much for not finishing another quilt, even though I gave myself a bit longer to do this one since we returned from our trip. I’m looking at the positives, which are that given I started this one less than a week ago, it’s already at this stage with only the final steps to complete. And if you say the final steps of baste, quilt and bind quickly, then it really isn’t very much at all!

My seventh charity quilt

Last month I intended to include much more yellow in my Friendly Bee quilt, but when I pulled the materials from my stash it didn’t work out that way, so this month I was more determined. And more successful!

The materials I’ve used in this quilt are parts of four different fat quarters, along with some plain yellow strips from an old netball skirt for the flowers, and some white/gold material as the background and first border which was left over from the backing of last month’s quilt. The pleated yellow border is also from an old netball skirt, which also explains the name. The aztec patterned material is an old duvet cover, and the grey which I’ll explain later was also from an old duvet cover, which I used to back my first charity quilt with Flying Geese. Nothing goes to waste here!

Once I’d drawn lines and pinned the HSTs (half square triangles) in place, it started to make more sense - well perhaps to me at this stage anyway.

Quite quickly four flowers emerged.

I was mildly irritated with myself as I hadn’t managed to match very many of my seams - but as we know, these are test blocks for my Mystery Block of the Month quilt, so at least I knew where I should focus my attention when it came to making that.

I added borders merrily, enjoying getting back to using my machine. This time I used the same material for all of the borders, mostly because I was that intent on having a cheery yellow quilt I wanted nothing to set me off track.

It was only when I laid the blocks out that I saw the nearly matching of the zig zags, which wasn’t my intention. It was close enough that it would look like I’d tried to pattern match, and failed - and I knew it would be distracting to my eye at least. But I also knew I wasn’t going to unpick them and try to get them to match.

So my plan was to add plain sashing to help distract my eyes - and I think it works. Phew.

So there it is, my seventh finished charity quilt top waiting to be finished off which I’m hoping will be relatively soon. My plan is to use the grey, white and yellow aztec print on the back of the quilt and to use that as the binding too, but there’s a couple of steps before I get to the binding.

Look out for the updated post, as I’ll share it again when it’s finished.

You can see my other quilts which I’ve made to donate to Project Linus - a charity whose mission is to provide love, a sense of security, warmth and comfort to children, who are sick, disabled, disadvantaged or distressed through the donation of new, homemade, washable quilts and blankets, including those that are part of this ‘stretch’ project in earlier posts. I’m aiming to publish an update on my progress in the last week of each month for the remainder of 2025.

The Friendly Bee

I’ve updated the final section of this post now that the quilt is fully complete. I’d hoped to finish this shortly after our holiday, but what with life, the heatwave it hasn’t happened until now. Though the heatwave has gone, it’s still warm in my sewing room - and plenty warm enough to have a quilt on my knee sewing the binding. But It’s finished, and I think it looks good.

I’ve made another quilt as part of my quilting ‘stretch’ project this time using the April block from Sherri at A Quilting Life’s mystery block a month. As I said then I don’t know if I’ll manage to make a quilt a month, but I won’t really know unless I try…

When I saw this one was another star I questioned my commitment to my challenge, and also my sewing ability. But, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, so phew.

My sixth charity quilt

As I said above, I wasn’t really looking forward to tackling another star block - the February vintage star block had many small pieces, which made me question why I cut up pieces of fabric to sew them back together again! Which is a fair point, when you look at it like that, but in for a penny, in for a pound and all that.

My original intention was to pull ‘yellow’ fabrics from my stash, as I thought this might lift my mood - but as you can see they ended up more beige than I expected.

Well not entirely beige, there’s some gold and rust colours in there too. The fabrics for this quilt included some more of the old orange curtains and of the duvet cover I used as backing last month, some checked material which I used back in January for the cute little houses, two vintage pillowcases and some new-to-me fat quarters bought for a much reduced price at my sewing group’s recent stash sale, plus some ‘wood effect’ material which dare I say it, I wasn’t in love with and some much smaller scraps which I used as the background on two of the blocks.

But actually it wasn’t anywhere near as daunting as I thought it might be once I started. Now isn’t there a life lesson in there?!

The blocks surprised me and came together relatively quickly.

I find it easier to lay all the elements of the blocks out in their approximate location - this means I don’t either over, or under cut the pieces I need, and it gives me a look at how the blocks might work.

I think the colours work well together - I needed to add the pink flowered background (used on the two blocks on the right) as I didn’t have enough of the fabric used for the blocks on the left, but the colours tone.

And with a bit more sewing I had four friendship star blocks.

Introducing the bees

You’re probably wondering why I’ve named this quilt the Friendly Bee, well the border fabrics should help explain that.

As you can see both of the materials bordering the Friendship star have bees, hence the Friendly Bee name.

The ‘wood effect’ fabric actually works well in this quilt, and tones nicely with the honeycomb fabric used alongside it. The two outer borders are the vintage pillowcases, and as they’re the material I had the most of they were obvious choices for the longer borders.

With the blocks attached I added the outer border, this time using two different fabrics - and I think this works, I wasn’t keen on having two of the same pattern together, so by using the pink flowered material again here I’ve avoided that.

Finishing the quilt: Update

Last month I opted to quilt the Four pink hearts and a hug quilt with diagonal lines, and it worked well. My plan is to try that again, so that’s what I’m part-way through doing for this one too. Yes, this quilt isn’t finished but it’s pretty close - I’ll update this post when it’s actually finished.

I knew that some months it would likely be harder to fit in making a quilt around everything else that life has to offer, that’s why I’ve called it my ‘stretch’ project. I’ll let you know if a few weeks how it turned out.

Update

It’s taken me longer to finish this one than I’d hoped, but it’s finished and it looks great.

Before I went away I’d got all the sewing done, which left me the job of basting, quilting and binding. With the weather a little cooler, I managed to get that done in two days, just in time to start the next one!

I opted to quilt this one in vertical lines rather than the diagonal ones I mentioned above. I actually prefer this, which is good as not only was it easier and quicker to do, I was able to mark out two lines at a time - speed quilting, if you would!

From this I learnt it’s easy to reposition the tape, but it’s also easy for the tape to move about a bit, so I’ve experimented with the optimal number of pins to keep it in place. That worked, and using the tape as a guide also worked, and so it’s something I’ll do again.

It looks pretty good doesn’t it? And way better than I could have hoped for when I pulled those mostly beiges from my stash!

You can see my other quilts which I’ve made to donate to Project Linus - a charity whose mission is to provide love, a sense of security, warmth and comfort to children, who are sick, disabled, disadvantaged or distressed through the donation of new, homemade, washable quilts and blankets, including those that are part of this ‘stretch’ project in earlier posts. I’m aiming to publish an update on my progress in the last week of each month for the remainder of 2025.

Four pink hearts and a hug

I’ve made another quilt as part of my quilting ‘stretch’ project this time using the March block from Sherri at A Quilting Life’s mystery block a month. As I said then I don’t know if I’ll manage to make a quilt a month, but I won’t really know unless I try…

I’m glad that this block was relatively simple to put together as time has been more challenging this month, perhaps the warmer weather or something else, I’m not sure quite why, but I only finished it after a concerted push last night…

My fifth donation quilt

As soon as I saw the centre block was a heart I knew that I’d be using pinks from my stash - but which ones! The pile of pinks on the right of this basket are (from top to bottom) from an old quilt cover, two old shirts, the old quilt cover again, a mystery plain pink and remnants of a much loved Boden sundress. I’ve no recollection of where the plain pink material has come from so perhaps it was part of a mystery bundle I picked up somewhere.

The paler pinks which I’m using for the hearts are likely to be much older and acquired at some point from mum’s stash, and the paler background is from the lining of the sundress. As you’ll see as this post progresses I also added some grey zigzagged material from an old duvet, which was also the backing on last month’s quilt.

Testing the block

As you know I’m making test blocks ahead of making the block for my mystery block of the month quilt and I’m making these blocks into quilts of their own. And this block has relatively few pieces compared to last month’s vintage star block, and was therefore much easier to put together, phew.

The part that required the most concentration was not to cut the wrong side of the sewn line, but I managed that successfully each time - and tbh it really wasn’t that hard, but that was the potential stumbling block (no pun intended) this month.

And in no time at all I’d added borders to the hearts, and joined the blocks together.

But I felt it wasn’t quite there yet, so left it overnight mulling over which fabrics to use for the borders. In the end I decided on a thinner red checked border before adding more of the multi-patterned pink material from the old duvet cover. I think it needed the bold checked thin border to make it work. I also knew that it needed the stripes to match as best they could to avoid it looking messy.

And with a little bit of luck that worked out.

I’ve also changed my mind on which backing to use, originally I thought it would be the multi-patterned pink fabric but I think any more of that would be too much, and so I’ve opted to cut up a paler pink single duvet cover which I bought a couple of years ago on eBay for £1.04 plus postage - as I discovered in the label I’d thoughtfully written for myself when I unfurled the fabric.

Finishing the quilt

I got the quilt to a finished quilt top level in a few days, then it sat for a while waiting for me to assemble it with the batting and backing fabric. In fact I snuck that part in ahead of waiting for family to arrive over Easter, which was a good use of time. Then after the bank holiday I set about quilting it. Remembering that the purpose of these quilts is partly to up my skill levels and to get myself comfortable with both piecing and quilting, as with practice comes a better crafter.

So rather than quilt this one as I have before I decided to quilt it in diagonal rows across the quilt, and then spent ages looking for some masking tape that I was sure I had,. I didn’t find that, but I did find some tape with marked lines on which was probably a better option, or it was once I worked out where to place it most effectively, and so I didn’t sew over it!

I also wanted to change the density of the quilting on the hearts. I considered a different colour thread, but in the end opted to add quilting lines closer together, using the same approach.

And I’m happy with how this quilting style turned out; the tape worked well and could be easily repositioned for each line of sewing. I didn’t have a plan for the spacing between the lines before I started and worked that out as soon as I started to plan the second line - they’re about 8.5cm apart. Yes they could be more precise, and ideally closer together but it was good to discover this process as I went.

It turned out well didn’t it? And four hearts and a hug seems the perfect title for this one.

You can see my other quilts which I’ve made to donate to Project Linus - a charity whose mission is to provide love, a sense of security, warmth and comfort to children, who are sick, disabled, disadvantaged or distressed through the donation of new, homemade, washable quilts and blankets, including those that are part of this ‘stretch’ project in earlier posts. I’m aiming to publish an update on my progress in the last week of each month for the remainder of 2025.