Needles and pins

Needles

* Size 11 sharps (Beadsmith) current favourite for piecing; seem to do well even on heavier batiks.
* Size 9 sharps for basting, along with DMC crochet thread.
* Size 9 betweens for quilting.
* Size 10 appliqué for appliqué - need to test that with other fabrics and needles.
* Embroidery/crewel from a 5-10 mixed pack, probably around 8 or 9 - good for embroidery.

Pins

* Presencia 18 x 0.52 steel for piecing - quality problems, I had to throw a lot of these out, but still the only short, fine pins around.
* Prym 26 x 0.55 brass - useful for pinning on binding.
* Hemline 54 x 0.65 flower head pins - useful for pinning to the ironing board and pulling the binding through. The plastic does start to melt if the iron is left on it for more than a few moments, but no disasters yet.

Bedspread finished: general post

I finally finished my 89" x 87" bedspread, and you may see it below the cut and also here, here and here. The design was based on this quilt, only I used 30 degree angles where hers are sharper, and batiks in autumnal tones. The diamonds have sides 6" long and were initially sewn in strips of 7, which is half the length of the completed quilt and was a more manageable length to deal with at this stage. Finally I sewed the strips into full-length ones fourteen pieces long, added triangles at each end, and sewed those strips together to make the final quilt. The quilting design can be seen here (well, I added another little spiral in the end), and it's based on Klimt's Stoclet Frieze (the Tree of Life). Since the quilting lines were as far apart as I could get away with, it was surprisingly quick to quilt. Everything was sewn by hand as usual. The worst jobs were laying all the half-strips out to decide which ones should go next to each other, and crawling around on the floor for two hours to do the pin-basting, which had to be done for half the quilt at one time since the floor wasn't big enough.

( Picture time )

Autumnal bedspread: stats and method

Method: hand-pieced and hand-quilted.
Size: 87" x 89" plus 1/4" binding.
Piecing design: based on Offspring by Nancy Neumann. Made entirely of diamonds with 30 degree angles, and sides 6" long when sewn. These were sewn into strips 14 diamonds long, and the 29 strips were sewn together with triangles at the top and bottom.
Fabrics: 30 or so fabrics, primarily in browns, reds, golds, a little green, and minor touches of navy, purple and pink. Colours ranges from very muted to semi-bright, and from a soft gold through to very dark brown. Mostly batiks, a couple of Fossil Ferns, and some Makower Ombre stripes. The patterns were medium to large scale. The grain of the fabric ran along the length of the strips, so the pieces had to be cut into right- and left-facing.
Batting: Quilters' Dream cotton request weight.
Backing: A golden yellow cotton reminiscent of Moda Marbles, slightly lighter weight than usual, unknown manufacturer.

( Other notes )