A Quilting Update

It's been a while since I've brought you up to date on the progress I've made on my current big quilt project. It's been coming along slowly, but the quilt top still isn't anywhere near finished. 

I had a bit of a disaster when there wasn't enough of the fabric I bought from eBay to finish it. I then ordered some more from the same listing and what came wasn't anything like the original and I'm not sure if it was even cotton. 

As a consequence, I had to source some more fabric, which I did, but it's also not cotton it's polycotton and not exactly the same shade, but very similar. I did take a swatch and what I bought was the best I could do, so I'm hoping it won't look too disparate.

Anyway, I haven't started using it yet, so I'll let you know. Here's a picture of the quilt as it stands now:

I'm well on the way to completing the edges, but I do still have one whole side to do and a bit of the other side. I laid it out on LB's bed, as this is the bed I've made it for. 

Before I left my last job at a homewares retailer, I bought some plain 100% cotton navy bed linen, using my staff discount, to set it off better. I'm happy with the look and the bed linen feels lovely and soft, although it was a bit thinner than I expected.

I think that once the quilt is finished, it will look very nice in here. Although I made it for LB, I'm not entirely sure whether it is LB's vibe, but I can always use it for when guests come and stay in this room or just to look nice while LB is at Uni. I'm not sure if or how I'm going to bind it yet, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it, but I'm happy with how it's turned out so far. As with every hand stitched thing I make, it's not perfect, but I like that about it, as it looks hand crafted and not machine made.

In other quilting news, I have started a project with the 1" square quilting kit that I bought from the charity shop a while back. Here's a picture of the kit I bought for £1.50 as a reminder:

It's a super sweet size to work with and I've utilised as many scraps as I could so far, so it's quite a random bunch of fabrics. No fabric is used more than once and I'm now trying to use bits of larger pieces of fabric to extend it. It works much better with ditsy prints because of the size of the pieces, so I'm trying to stick to these types of fabric designs. I have a lot of fabrics in my stash, so this shouldn't be a problem.

Anyway, here's my progress so far:

It's probably going to be a small runner/mat for the top of a chest of drawers or something similar. I chose the cross design as the squares lend themselves well to it and I like how they sit next to each other. It's very simple to sew the pieces together too and is generally a fun project to use up small scraps. It may take a while to finish, but there's no hurry, it just gives me a change from the bigger project when I need it and it is something that will travel easily, with just a small pouch to carry everything you need.

Aside from these two projects, I haven't really done any other quilting. I do have another large project that I want to start once the blue quilt is done, namely another quilt, for the bed in the sewing room this time. I've already got the fabrics and chosen the template and design, so it's just a case of getting started at some point. I may begin work on it before the blue quilt is finished, to give me more variety and because I find it hard to resist starting new projects once I've got them in my head.

Have you been working on anything lately?