Thursday, 26 June 2014

2012 finish - 'Fencing in' for Gavin

This is a quilt I made for my Dad in November 2012 (for his birthday in December), before I started blogging.  I spent some time with my parents recently so took the chance to get some photos of it.

 
It is a slightly adapted version of Denyse Schmidt's 'Basketweave' quilt from her book, 'Modern Quilts: Tradional Inspiration'.  The slight change I made was to cut each rail slightly smaller than recommended in the pattern (only I can't find the notes to see what size!), I did this to maximise the number of pieces I could cut from the secondhand shirt I was using (its the green and cream fabric).

The quilt started with the striped (cream, green, dark brown and mid blue) fabric that was purchased as a second hand man's shirt from an St Vincents Opportunity Shop in Melbourne.  I LOVE secondhand man's shirts - they come in great colours, are soft from some wear, pure cotton and you get heaps of fabric for a tiny price!
 

 
The dark blue fabric is from another secondhand shirt, and the brown is a lovely linen, from the new shirting remnants my girlfriend bought me in Singapore.  The rest of the fabrics are from Amitie in Melbourne, one of my very favourite fabric shops.
 
 
 
 

I quilted this myself.  First I ditch stitched the whole quilt, then I did some FMQ, but not much as I wanted it to stay soft and drape well.  My Dad is a man of plain tastes, so I didn't want to the quilt to get too fussy.  I used a stylised chain fence design on all the plain blue blocks, placed anywhere in the block that felt right, but continuing that same line across all blue blocks in that row or column....
 



...echo quilting around the circles and diamonds for the fabric below....


 
 
...and a stylised vine or tree design on the green and while dot fabric
 


I used an old doily for the label on the back, and carefully unpicked and attached the labels from the shirt that had been part of my inspiration.  (The labels from the navy shirt had already been included in a previous quilt that it was partially used for).


I had to include this last photo because of the lamb in the background, I guess spring is arriving in New Zealand!
 



2 comments:

  1. Hope your dad loved it and is getting a lot of use with the chilli snap we've had.
    Very inspired now to collect up men's shirts, yet another reason to visit the op shops, Yay.

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  2. Great photos, love the one on the old gate.

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