Plaid Away!

Why have I not been blogging?  

I have had my nose to the grindstone finishing a quilt and a mini hamper for my delightful friend.....in the Bee a Brit Stingy Secret Santa swap!

First off the quilt!   

I started and finished the string pieced centre section of this quilt in  July/August 2011.  I had joined in with the marvellously productive Julie at juliekquilts on her string along!  Since then it has hung around waiting for a border and backing.

 

Then I decided to ditch the idea of a complicated border after all there is quite a lot going on already!  

Once the border was done I decided this quilt would leapfrog to the top of my list with a simply pieced backing!

I fell in love with this star - inspired by Katy-I'm a ginger monkey - Jones! and this gorgeous quilt that gave me the impetus I needed to get this quilt finished!  Yeah you have to love that!

So how to quilt it!?   As there are lots of little bits on the string side and for quickness I favoured machine quilting.  I briefly toyed with the idea of concentric circles but tossed that aside in favour of straight lines!  I know who would have thought it!  I love to do FMQ but wanted something simpler for this quilt.
Straight lines then but I didn't want to shove the whole quilt through that 9" gap of my sewing machine throat - so each quarter is quilted in an L shape.  With all the L's joining back to back in the middle - hope that is clear??   

Next question - what colour of thread ?

I got a few likely colours out and thought they looked so good together I'd use them all - in fact I used some others too thanks to my marvellous win from the lovely Lynne and Aurifil!

 So I did some plaid quilting on my plaid quilt.  Lots of colour, close lines of quilting, then gaps - seriously fun to do except for the winding of bobbins!  And my trademark quilted label - Plaid Away!  Was I thinking football or something else when I named it? 

And now here's what I sent to my partner in the Bee a Brit Stingy secret Santa swap - it has been safely delivered by sled and she seems to like it!   Woohoo!  Or rather Hohoho!

Any ideas who it is for??

I'll let Mr Giraffe reveal all....

Get better Jan !  Big hugs and hearty best wishes from the South!