I've been working away on my Sailboats quilt. A couple of weeks ago my friend Helen (yes, the one with that cushion) gave me some pointers on machine appliqué and let me use her (rather lovely) Janome Horizon to appliqué the stars onto their background squares.
This was a deviation from the pattern - it instructed reverse needle turn appliqué, where you needle turn appliqué the lighter background pieces to the star fabric. That method would make sense if, for example, the stars were light and the background was dark, but for this pattern it seemed like an unnecessarily large amount of work, so I went with machine appliqué instead.
This was a deviation from the pattern - it instructed reverse needle turn appliqué, where you needle turn appliqué the lighter background pieces to the star fabric. That method would make sense if, for example, the stars were light and the background was dark, but for this pattern it seemed like an unnecessarily large amount of work, so I went with machine appliqué instead.
I then stitched the star borders together and added them to the central panel and the first border. After that I created the third and fourth borders using lots of little pieces of the blue and red fabrics I used for the boats and the stars.
Above is my finished quilt top, and below is the quilt top from the book (Le Petit Monde de Jacqueline Morel).
You can see that I changed the colour scheme up a bit - I think mine is a bit crisper and more modern, while the original has a softer, vintage feel to it. I also changed the placement of the boats, mainly because I liked the look of some more than others (and to be honest, I thought the little one in the centre of my quilt would be the most difficult to make and therefore I only wanted to make it once!).
You might also have noticed that my boats are reversed from the ones in the original quilt. This is because the pattern instructs you to use templates to make the boat blocks. I'm sorry, but no way was I going to do that - it would have been a disaster for me. Instead, I copied the boat blocks from the book, and used the copies as foundation papers to make the boat blocks. This was far more accurate (and therefore satisfying) for me.
I now have the quilt top basted and am planning to quilt it this week or this weekend. I have a question for my readers though - something which has been bothering me for a while. I will be giving this quilt at a baby shower, and I would really like to put a label on it, but I don't know what to say. My friend is having a baby boy, but he doesn't have a name yet (as far as I know - and it's not really the done thing here to name your baby before birth). I'm sure this is something many of you have encountered before, so I would love to know - what do you do in this situation?
P.S. You might want to check back tomorrow for a giveaway I have planned. Only if you like fabric though!
