Coffee Break

Has it really been over a month since my last post?  All this time at home and I never seem to get anything done.  Although, this post is proof against that because I have finished the coffee quilt for hubby.

It is 'inspired by' the 'Coffee's Up' quilt designed by Annalisa of Busy Thimbles.  We chose some different fabrics, and I made the quilt longer and wider to accomodate actualy sleeping on the couch, rather than just being a knee rug, which meant rearranging the coffee cup appliques.

We ended up buying a bamboo batting from Patchwork with Gail B in Bayswater, along with a binding fabric.  Not the original one I had seen (because they didn't have it in stock) but a similar colour one.  The advantage to making a quilt for your husband when you're 8 months pregnant is that he gets to crawl around on the floor doing all the pin basting for you and you just have to sit and watch!!

I'm not sure how I feel about pin basting now.  Between this quilt and the baby elephant quilt, the pins leave some rather large holes which don't disappear as easily as I'd like them to.  Maybe for my next quilt I will investigate other options (without having to hand baste the whole thing!).

The backing ended up being what we had originally planned, brushed cotton fabric in the middle and a border down the sides because it wasn't wide enough. I had a little bit of fun trying to work out what size to cut the centre piece so that the squares down the side were nicely placed.  In the end, the border fabric was practically the same size as the border fabric on the quilt front, so the quilting lines matched up nicely.

This was my first attempt at using monofilament as the top thread for quilting.  After some initial tension issues I got it sorted out and I'm rather happy with the result.  It also hides errors in the quilting where you go off a seam line!  I was going to get a bit fancy with my quilting on this one, but in the end went more basic, partly to get the quilt finished sooner as Premier League Soccer season has already started. 

I just quilted diagonally through all the squares, except for the coffee cups, which I quilting around the outside of the square and then tried my hand at free motion quilting around the cup.  My first real attempt at free motion quilting.  As you can see from below photo, my first attempt was rather wobbly, but by the time I'd done all 12 cups I think I was getting better.  Also hoping to do some free motion machine quilting on my baby elephant quilt so it was nice practice.  As with all these things, practice makes perfect.

I still have to make a quilt label for it, but at least it is finished now so it can be used.  The photos don't quite do it justice, I need to improve my photography skills for quilts, but at least this one gets to live in my house (rather than being gifted) so I'll always have the original to look at!

And of course my fuzzy baby had to "help".  To my annoyance, she claimed a spot on the quilt several times before it was finished, but now that it's being used on the couch she's allows to sit on it, as long as she shares.