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Thursday 20 August 2015

Heart for Burundi

A friend of mine has a Ball coming up at the end of this month. But it's not just a ball with a meal and dancing and fun to be had, it's to raise funds for a cause called: Villages of Life. Her brother is involved with an orphanage in Burundi and since I can't attend the ball, I went with making a quilt for the silent auction. That will be a challenge - seeing how much people think the quilt is worth, I'll let you know once I find out.

When I saw Sandra's quilt [musingsofamenopausalmelon.blogspot.com] I knew I had found the quilt to do - (thanks Sandra for the encouragement) especially when my friend had given me some 10" squares of shades of pink through to red that weren't really my choice of colour. This seemed to be a great use for them.

So I cut out some of her squares down to 5" by 51/2" and then added some other choices of blue/green/teal types. I liked the overall layout, then had a thought about using the leftovers for a pieced backing. The first shot here is just the pieces prior to them being sewn together.

I have worked pretty hard the last few days to get this finished!
I learned quite a lot from quilting this little piece (it finished at 58" square):
  • First of all a pieced backing is fine if you're using a reasonably thick wadding. Lately I've been using bamboo, but I went with cotton because its lighter and I thought manoeuvring through my Janome would be easier. It was easier, but I knew when I came across a seam in the backing. 


  • Secondly, quilting straight lines which create a 'frame' and then doing figure 8s, or capital S or maybe a musical clef type type shapes within that frame, works really well to highlight the centre of the quilt - and it's good fun. 

This is a shot of the body or centre of the heart with a paisley (?) type pattern that I experimented with as well, mostly sticking to one direction but occasionally going off on a tangent - maybe I should have done that more often, not sure. 


  • Thirdly, the scrolls - they take a lot of practise!! I think I improved and I'm grateful that those at the Ball and auction hopefully won't be quilting experts, so they'll think it looks OK. I used Superior Thread, Bottom Line which was very smooth, apart from the times when the machine just chose randomly to snap the thread. I did all the right things: new needle, full bobbin, quality thread and much patience, to get to the end. 



And finally one shot outside, that I managed to grab inbetween the showers here - it is Winter in the Southern Hemisphere after all! This shows much more clearly that the borders really are white and not cream as they appear indoors. 
Feel pretty satisfied with this quilt and I learned a lot which is always a good thing. I'm linking up with Freshly Pieced; Confessions of a Fabric Addict and Free-Motion by the River. 
Until next time,
Lynn


4 comments:

  1. Absolutely fabulous finish Lynn! SO FAST!! Thanks for the shout-out, and I will tell Helen to come visit you. To think her quilt in Ireland, mine in Canada, yours made in Australia, going to Burundi...small world, and another common thread: each of us made that quilt and sent it to someone in need of a quilty hug.

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  2. Hi Sandra told me to pop over and have a look . I love it . The heart quilt that keeps on giving x

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  3. It's beautiful, Lynn! Such a great cause, too. Whoop whoop!!

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