Wednesday 8 October 2014

This little piggy

It's school holidays and last week over just a couple of days, Eleanor and I quilted her first quilt. First we went through the process of pulling out about a dozen threads of various types in coordinating colours and I guided her through auditioning them and narrowing down the options until we found her favourite.

I started by making her draw out the meander on paper a few times, which really didn't impress her, but it's just so important to get an idea in our head and muscles of what we're going to quilt. Jamie Wallen reminded us of this in his class at AMQF and I took special note to tell her!


It's quilted in a simple meander spaced at about 1in, and we finished it in 6-7 sessions of 10-15 minutes each. As I do with James, I stand Eleanor on a child's wooden chair in front of me at my machine, and she rests her hands lightly over mine as we quilt. By the end she got quite good at understanding where we'd need to go next to fill in the spaces.

She's been at me ever since to finish it off, so tonight I had a view of these and plenty of other pigs (she chose quite a selection of pig prints for her backing!) while I hand sewed the binding down.

Eleanor has already chosen several fabrics for her next quilt, which she insists will be for me!

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