Polaroid 9 Patch

What a lovely quilt to finish up the month of May. It is my only finish this month but it was an important one.

The 9 Patch blocks were sewn by 14 ladies from the Quilt Club Australia Bee. Twelve were from my Bee #1 and two were from ladies in another QCA Bee. You can find my tutorial for the block here.

This quilt will be packaged up and sent off to a family who lost their house (and very nearly their own lives) in the Tasmanian Bushfires in January this year.

That brilliant orange Polaroid camera block was made by Kristy of Quiet Play who created the fab paper pieced pattern for it. You can find that Camera pattern in her Craftsy shop along with the patterns for the random polaroid blocks on the back. 

Kristy has already sent 4 quilts to the Bushfire affected family and I will send this one, along with my first ever quilt. 

I had just enough time this afternoon to catch the last of the sun to photograph the quilt. And so did the chooks.

'Little Girls' Quilt - Just in time

I used to work to deadlines in my BC (before children) life. As well as the teaching ones,  I also had University ones. Essays that had to be handed in after pulling very late nights. Some of those memories came back as I had to finish this quilt for my daughter's first day in Pre-Kindy this week. Even though I have been working on it pretty solidly for the past week, there was so much to 'get done' today.

I zig-zag stitched around the perimeter of the quilt and then cut off the excess backing and batting. It was a hot day, so I didn't want to have a lot of fabric in my lap....

or under the arm of my machine!

Then I chose a light pink cotton and a walking foot, I shadowed the ditch with my quilting. I managed to watch most of the 5th Season of 'The Wire'.

After dinner I had to choose a binding fabric from out of the 'Summer Song' Riley Blake range. Any of the prints would have worked but I chose the stripes. I wanted to cut on the bias to capitalise on the stripes staying vertical. I did not have a large pice of fabric, just under a yard, but then I remembered a MSQC tutorial on binding using only half a yard. I watched it a few times, before marking and sewing the 'tube'. 

I was getting tired by this point and the first result was out by about 1/4 inch, so I unpicked and restitched, until all the lines matched perfectly.

Then I cut along the straight lines with my fabric scissors...

I pressed in half until I had over 200" of binding (width 2 1/4")

Then sewed the binding to the front and then pressed it to the back and sewed again on the front 'in the ditch'. Did the little 'joining the ends' trick, for the first time, without consulting the tutorial.

I was horrified to find the clock face at 12:45am!

'Little Girls' Pre-Kindy quilt

Quilting detail

The back - using the left-over half-square triangles (HS)

The binding looks like retro lollies

I feel like I pulled an all-nighter. Now I am exhausted. But I got it done just in time and my little girl got to take it to Pre-Kindy.