Sorell and scraps

Post written by Evelyn

In July 2017 Ann Mc and I went to Tasmania for the weekend to celebrate Deidre Bond-Abel's new book Hat Creek Quilts with her and other Tasmanian quilters.  Up until this point I had appreciated these type of quilts but hadn't particularly fancied ever making one.  Well!  What an eye opener the weekend was!  Deidre had set up the hall with all of the quilts from the book and she had yummy fabrics and wools on display and for sale.  I was hooked!  I bought the book, the Sorell quilt kit and other fabrics.

The book

Deidre's version

I started making the quilt top and it was a lot of work for a 48"x 48" quilt so I decided to make mine bigger.  I raided Ann's stash for coordinating fabrics and bought matching border fabric at Patchwork with Gail B . During the making of the quilt Ann and I ran into Deidre at one of the quilting shows and Deidre just about managed not to grimace when I told her I'd sewn the appliqué pieces on my sewing machine instead of by hand but she did wince when I told her I'd used appliqué paper and pressed the shapes to death with my steam iron.  They were nice and flat and stuck down well!

My version

I had worried that I'd have to do some kind of quilting that avoided the actual appliqué and I don't think I have the skills to do that so I was relieved to see that many of Deirdre's quilts had been quilted with an all over pattern so that's what I did.  

It looks lovely on my bed and I'm so glad I made it bigger!

Scraps

This little quilt has been made with some of Judy V's scraps.  There was a pile of fabrics all muddled up in a carrier bag and I noticed that some of the jelly roll strips could go together so I rescued those.  I took them to retreat and sewed them all together but I hated the quilt top because it was all wonky and wavy so it was relegated to the "let's forget about it" pile.  Recently, Kate and I went to Kerrie at Black Forest quilting and a customer was picking up a gorgeous jelly roll quilt.  We oohed and ahhed over it and it turned out to have been made by the customer's 11 year old granddaughter!  Kerrie was telling us how impressed she was because the jelly roll strips were nice and straight and didn't bend like a banana like many jelly roll quilts do.  So, anyway, I learned my lesson from a very young quilter and unpicked my quilt top then MEASURED and cut my strips before PINNING and sewing into nice straight rows.  It's amazing what a bit of measuring and pinning can do ha ha!

I used offcuts of Kate's donated wadding which I pieced together and backing from Joy.  I quilted this on my quilting frame while Sorell was on Judy's frame.  I'm being greedy while Judy isn't allowed to come over and use her frame!

This quilt is square.  The photographer is obviously useless.