Some of you will remember reading about this quilt before in my post of 1st December last year. Today I am entering it into the Art Quilts section at the Bloggers' Quilt Festival so I shall tell you a bit more about it.
This quilt was made for a doll quilt swap where the theme was to show where you are from. I decided to represent the town where I grew up, Wolverhampton. The sunset behind the factory is based on a view I would see from the bus on my way home from school. All the fabric was already in my cupboard - I didn't need to buy anything new. I absolutely love the rusty brown, which is a shot cotton, which together with the black is perfect for a quilt showing an industrial town with lots of old red brick buildings. The smoke from the chimney is a batik, which has swirls which were just right to show the billowing, and the top strip of the sky is a section from a print cut so that I could use the dark patches as clouds.
All the piecing was done on my Serata treadle machine, and the appliqué was done with my 1927 Singer 99K.
The smoke, sun and feather are all stitched with three lines of stitching around the edge to prevent fraying. For the sun I used red cotton to make it glow.
For the town's motto (which appears on its coat of arms) I used the Singer 99K to do two lines of straight stitch. One line didn't stand out enough, so I had to do a second line immediately next to the first.
To get the flow of the writing, I made a stencil on greaseproof paper. First I wrote out the words in pencil on a piece of ordinary paper, then laid the greaseproof paper on top, then "stitched" (no thread) along the line of the writing with the 99K using a thick, blunt needle. This gave a perforated line in the greaseproof paper, which I then laid over the pink material, and then I sewed in the writing with black thread. The greaseproof paper tears away easily afterwards.
For the quill in the border I added the appliqué by machine, with a few machine stitched lines for detail, and hand stitched on a piece of cord down the centre and a few little wisps at the base of the feather. I put the quill at the right, to balance with the chimney and smoke on the left hand side of the picture...
... and the button is on the left hand side of the border to balance with the sun.
All the quilting was done by hand, and the three birds in the sky were stitched at the end, so I could judge exactly where I should place them.
This quilt now belongs to Peggy in Georgia, so I can only tell you from memory how big it is. So far as I remember, it is roughly 21 inches by 17.
If you are slightly puzzled by the quill and the button in the border, here is an interesting video for you to enjoy, and you will see why I asked for a partner in Georgia.
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Yesterday I finally got round to using the braiding foot that came with the Serata treadle. I put it on the Singer 15K hand machine and fed through some teeny tiny ric rac. The braid waved a bit from side to side as it went through, but lined up perfectly with the needle and the stitching went straight down the middle.
I think I might have to stock up on more braid.
This is a bit irritating. I was looking forward to trying out a bit of free motion work on the 201K treadle and found that my hopping foot wasn't compatible. The lever above the needle clamp stops dead when it reaches the screw on the cylinder that contains the needle bar, so the needle can rise no higher than shown in the picture. The screw is essential because it fixes on the last but one hook that the thread passes through.
My brother in law looked at this picture and suggested that because the lever doesn't actually need to be so long the end could be sawn off to give it clearance. He tells me he has the tools if he wants me to do it. Otherwise, I can get a different type of hopping foot.
Agonising decisions.
Update - Decision made...
I've had a think and had good look at how much extra lever there is to play with. When the foot is attached to the 15K and the needle is in the highest position there is a good quarter of an inch spare at the top. You can guarantee that if we tried cutting the lever to fit the 201K we would shave off a fraction too much. I am going to get another type of foot for the 201K - could be interesting!
The world has turned yellow near our house - about six adjacent fields of rapeseed.
This photo was taken just before sunset on 13th May in a freezing cold wind.
It was all stamped on the front inspection plate so you couldn't possibly lose it - needle size, thread thickness and stitch length. If only the range of threads were still available now.
Today was my first chance to get a picture of the whole of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Quilt.
It was quite a thrill to see the Judges' Merit rosette attached to it.
There are lots of firsts associated with this quilt - first large quilt with appliqué, first large quilt quilted entirely at home, first quilt made using the quilt-as-you-go method, first quilt show, first ribbon...
When watching Leah Day's videos I remember her saying that to really get to grips with free motion quilting you just need to jump in and do a whole quilt, even if you just use one pattern on the quilt. I'm so glad I took her advice! The meandering pattern I did gave the quilt an all over texture which set off the colours and shapes of the appliqué in a way I really liked.
I often wonder whether Leah ever imagined that people would watch her videos and then get started with free motion quilting on a treadle!
The show is well worth a visit if you can get there. So many fabulous quilts! I took loads of photos, but at the moment I'm not sure whether I will be able to post them here. Show rules...
Update Friday 17th May
This post is now being linked up to Leah Day's blog for Free Motion Friday.
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Thank you everyone for your lovely comments! They are greatly appreciated.
Love,
Muv
The illustrations are from the October 1942 issue of Woodworker magazine. I've seen pictures of treadles with wooden legs before and wondered why they hadn't got the standard iron legs. Now I know why - over-enthusiasm in the DIY department. Wooden legs were considered more modern and a way of increasing the value of the machine. I can't believe they could ever have been as stable or as long lasting as the original iron legs.
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