Apples Quilt

Meet Apples, my third quilt (here's my first and second).


The weird bubbling of the fabric is because I used basting spray to stick the quilt top to the batting (in this case fleece).  Two types of quilting cotton on top and purchased bias binding for the binding.  Yes, I've learnt my lesson there and will be making my own from now on (so much cheaper!).


For our wedding two years ago, BM and I had blankets so people could sit outside while eating canapes, sipping wine and listening to jazz - and in case you're worried about the New Zealand sun, we also supplied sun screen and parasols.  

I used some of my previous blanket makes (here, and here) but needed to bulk up the options.  I bought fleece in yellow and orange from Spotlight and made some fleece blankets by cutting the length the same as the width.  Of course, this means I have a few fleece blankets left over and am looking at ways of converting them into more usable (and cute) blankets.  This apple quilt is the first prototype.


I quilted it with red thread and like how it looks against the yellow fleece, and the two quilting cottons (red apples on a pink background and red, green and yellow apples on a green background).  Its my first machine quilted quilt and it was so much quicker to do!  I'll have to practise the binding a bit more (and watch a few videos - all suggestions welcome!) as I didn't manage to catch the binding when I stitched it the second time.  I know I can hand stitch the other side of the binding - but this needs to be a quick and fun make for me to work through all that fleece.  I also have a binding foot for my janome which didn't seem to help much at all.

On the lessons learnt: 
* the fleece works nicely as a backing and batting (and should be easy to chuck in the wash to clean and not be too precious about its use), 
* I was happy enough with the machine quilting just following the lines - my actual piercing needs to improve a bit for these lines to be straighter!

And the quilt has been delivered to a Fabric Hoarder who admired it when I was finishing it up in Jan.  Nice to see it given to someone who will appreciate it or pass it along!


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