Wednesday 21 May 2008

Seaside

For today's post I've decided to show one of my favourite quilts, made before I started blogging. I've left the images quite a bit larger than usual, so hopefully you'll be able to click on them to see more detail.
I made Seaside for my neice Zoe, born in February 2007. I'd made Beach for her parents' wedding gift in 2005, and this was to tie in with the theme.
As always, looking back on it, I can see patches I would change, but that's so much easier to see once the top is complete, and I don't dwell on it. The 'landscaping' is done using a method of foundation-piecing I came up with myself (although I don't necessarily claim to be original here!) and have used in several quilts.
I love the fabrics I found for the beach, and finished it off by embroidering the tops of a few images so they appear to be in front of the waves (the bucket, a spade and the flag on the sandcastle).
Among the fish is Nemo, because that's what my brother-in-law often gets called.
I also had fun experimenting with more adventurous FMQ than I'd tried before. I tried several methods and threads for quilting around the starfish in the central border, but nothing was both neat enough and visible enough for my satisfaction, so I unpicked it - several times!

2 comments:

Leah said...

Oooh lovely. I really like how the two are connected - gives a realy family, continuity feel :)

Louise said...

Emma they are stunning! I love how there are so many different fabrics that all tie in together to make the whole design. I can't even imagine how you put it all together, one day you'll have to make a tutorial so I can figure out the process ;)

Thanks for blogging your beautiful work, it's so inspiring!