Lockdown Quilting Projects

This lockdown, I've been working on a few quilting projects. The first project was a TV/sofa quilt that I started in a previous lockdown. It is made from a single quilt we no longer needed, which I used as wadding, and some of my favourite fabrics from my fabric collection. They are mostly vintage Laura Ashley fabrics, bar one. It has been made in my favoured style of quilt, using strips of fabric on one side and then just one fabric on the reverse. I find it the easiest style to use when I'm using a very thick wadding such as a quilt.

I needed to hand quilt between each strip of the different fabrics, due to the fact that my sewing machine hadn't been working for a few months.  This took an hour or so to do each row, so I took my time and completed one row per week, as it can be a bit slow and tedious.

Eventually, all of the rows got finished and last week I just needed to complete it by hand sewing the binding onto the edges.  This was slightly more enjoyable and was just a couple of afternoons' work. I was very happy to get it finished though. 

Here's a picture of the finished quilt:

I'm very happy with it, as it's very snuggly and warm, matches the décor in the living room much better than the one we have been using, and it can probably be washed in our washing machine, as it is only a single sized quilt.

Quilt projects 2 (a, b & c), were projects I mostly started towards the end of last year. I think I've already mentioned them in a previous post, but I've never posted pictures of the finished results. They were a project I had intended to do for years, but never got around to, namely making a quilt for the dog, to go in her basket. As she's now 8 and aging fast, I thought I'd better get on with it.

I had quite a few dog/animal print fabrics in my collection, and I thought they'd be great for this project.  I had to make it using the paper piece method, as I could sew this by hand without needing a sewing machine. For the first original quilt I made the pieces brick sized rectangles. 

I was making this in the lead up to Christmas and wanted to get it finished in time, so that I could give it to her as a present on Christmas day. When Lockdown 3 was announced, this meant that I had the time to focus on it and I did manage to get it done. 

Here's the finished result:

Thankfully, the dog does seem to like it, when she does deign to sleep in her basket that is, (she often sleeps on the sofa, on a quilt I made for LB 10 years ago, or sometimes sleeps on LB's bed). It's an easy size to wash and take with us when we travel.

In addition to making this quilt for the dog, I also decided to use some of the leftover fabric to hand quilt a pillow cover for the cushion in her travel cage in the car. I couldn't finish this project until I got a new sewing machine, however, as I needed to sew the edges together and doing it by hand wouldn't have been strong and secure enough. Anyway, at the beginning of February, I received my new sewing machine, as it came back in stock in Argos (an Xmas gift from OH). Thus, I could test it out by finishing this project and attaching the cover to the pillow. 

Here's a picture of it in situ in the cage:

I then decided to make another dog quilt with the leftover bits of fabric, for the dog's other basket in the kitchen. Again it's hand paper pieced. (I wanted another project to do whilst watching TV) I used an old pure wool dog blanket as wadding, but I made the pieces smaller in order to use up as many of the leftover pieces as I could. I had to use a few more fabric scraps from my scrap basket too, so that I had enough fabric to complete it, but I'm very happy with how it turned out.

The third and  final quilt project that I've completed during lockdown, was a cover for my new sewing machine. I'd made one for my previous machine 6 or 7 years ago and decided that I'd like to make a different one for this machine, which was also made by hand, as I didn't have the new machine at the time that I started it.

Part way through the project, I decided I didn't really like it so much and was going to start a new one made on the new machine, but since attaching the binding, it seemed to come together better and  I've decided that I do in fact like it, so I'm sticking with this one. It's reversible, as you can see from the pictures and was made mostly from scraps. It was satisfying to be able to use them for something.  I've just got to add elastic and buttons to each end of the cover  and  then it should fit more securely.

So, as you can see, I've been pretty busy with quilting during this lockdown. I do find it extremely therapeutic, it's like a kind of meditation for me. I'm not sure what I'm going to do now all these projects have been finished, but maybe I do need a break for a while as my fingers always get cut to shreds by the pins and need to recover.