Thursday 9 November 2017

Grayson Perry quilt






I am so pleased I can finally share this quilt - pleased because it's been received and liked by its new owners, and also just pleased because I finally finished it! This one was a long time in the making.  This is my second time using the Bow & Arrows quilt pattern by Suzie Quilts but my first time ever making a larger quilt as up until this I had only made baby quilts.  All the stages - cutting, piecing, quilting and binding, took longer due to the size but the main reason it took longer was overcoming the nerves about quilting a full size quilt. I just kept putting it off, partly nerves about ruining it but also just a bit overwhelmed by the sheer size of quilting it on my domestic machine in my little sewing space under the stairs.  Once I got started the quilting though I actually really enjoyed it.






This quilt was a wedding gift for a very good friend of mine.  She introduced me to the art of Grayson Perry years ago as she is a big fan and we have been to see two exhibitions of his work together as well as going to hear him talk at the British Museum, so I knew I wanted to use this fabric.  The fabric is a design by Grayson Perry for Liberty and was a gift to me from a friend who had acquired lots of fabric from somewhere but didn't use it and was doing a clear out.  The grey and pink were fabric I already had in my stash which luckily just tied in.  The beautiful backing & binding fabric is Robert Kaufman Essex yarn dyed linen in pickle and I bought 2 metres for this project (I still have some left, hopefully enough for a summer top!)


Essex yard dyed linen quilt backing

I just followed the pattern exactly, using the no-waste method for flying geese.  I couldn't decide what colour to bind it with as initially I thought I'd use the pink but then decided this could make it look a bit boxed in or small.  Then I realised I had enough of the lime green/chartreuse linen so I just pulled the backing round to the front and sewed it with a blind stitch. I used this tutorial as a guideline but I didn't want to just machine sew the binding as I don't like how this looks, and also I like finishing off a quilt with hand-sewing.  Usually this involves machine sewing down the binding on the front then pinning the binding in place on the reverse then using a blind stitch. In this case I just pulled the backing round to the front then did the pinning and blind-stitch on the front of the quilt.  To me this final stage of hand-sewing feels like a nice way to say goodbye to a quilt!


all packed up & ready to post


10 comments:

  1. This is beautiful, Kathryn! I’m not surprised that they loved it! X

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    1. Thanks Helen! Sorry for my delayed response. X

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  2. This is fantastic! I love the color combination. What a labor of love. I'm sure your friend will treasure it for years to come.

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    1. Thanks Claire! I wasn't too sure about the colours as I was making it but I'm so glad I stuck with my initial instinct as they do go well together.

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  3. This is so lovely! What a wonderful present.

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  4. What an amazing and enormously generous thing to do!! and it's even more wonderful that your beautiful quilt is personalised to your friend's artistic taste. You are the best kind of friend.

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    1. thank you Carolyn, what a lovely comment!

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  5. What a lovely and thoughtful gift. I'm a fan of Grayson Perry too.

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    1. Thank you! I've still got some of the Grayson Perry fabric in another colour-way so I'm sure it'll make it's way into a quilt one of these days too.

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