Tradewinds finished

It is just rubbish weather for taking pics - winter in Auckland means a great many rainy days. This means I was forced to climb on a chair and take a picture of my Tradewinds quilt on the bed.

I love the bright colours in this quilt - I bought a fat quarter bundle and used all the fabric, but ideally I would have liked it to be one triangle wider. Never mind. And just because there can never be any show without Punch...

Binding

I ended up picking out some of the quilting on my Tradewinds quilt. I was going to stitch double echo lines along the seams but once I had done a few I didn't like the look of it -  I think because there is so much going on in this quilt as it is colour-wise. So I have stuck with the single echo lines:

Not all my points meet as neatly as this, but I am thankful that at least some of them stand up ok to the camera close-up! I had some difficulty choosing fabric to bind with, but in the end I settled on a nice turquoise. It is one of my favourite colours so I'm hoping it will work some colour-magic!

Quilting underway

I have begun quilting my Tradewinds quilt. I always find the first bit kind of daunting, but once I have got some long lines done and and don't have to fret about the quilt layers moving about so much I can settle into a bit of a rhythm. I'm stitching about a 1/4 inch out from either side of all my seam lines to start with and considering repeating this so there are double lines echoing the seam lines.

I also made another block sample for my Monday night modern quilt group bee that we are planning. At our last meeting we realised that coming up with a bee block is not quite a simple as it seems, especially if you want to give people a bit of a chance to be creative. I think I prefer the second colourway I have tried and will probably use Kristy's suggestion to sash each block as well.

Option A - solids only:

Option B - prints and solids:

Decisions, decisions! 

Tradewinds

I have finished sewing my large Tradewinds triangles together. I can't stop gushing about how much I love the colours in this fabric. My quilt-along buddy went away for the weekend and I promised I wouldn't do any more on it until she has sewn all her triangles together. So instead of sewing, I spent some time trying to photograph it in the wind. I may also have spent time muttering 'my preciousssssss' while stroking the fabric...