I had one more special present I wanted to make for another of my special friends...
Jules.... is always there for me... she comes to the studio on a regular basis.. helps me out in all sorts of ways... cutting, folding, stitching, getting kits ready... we travel together to craft fairs across this great big country of ours... you may have seen her... all because she loves patchwork... and loves Hot Possum... and because we are also great friends..
So this has really been my year of making special gifts for my loved ones.... now I was going to put this together by myself this afternoon but Jules wanted to come as she read my list of to do things on Friday (on the list was just written patchwork quilt, that will teach me)... what was I to do... I tried hard to say no I'll be okay... come Thursday morning but Jules's doggy Oliver was going into the vet for his de-manly operation today... and I think she needed the distraction..
So when Jules got here... I had to hold it all in... and being the good friend I am, I made Jules sew it all together yep you read it right... SEW IT TOGETHER... what else could I do, I just said it was a quilt for the blog, which is true I just left out the bit about her, oh well only friends could do that.... all the time sewing, Jules is saying "oh this is going to be lovely"... (bite my tongue)... "its just gorgeous"... (bite my tongue again) I could hear her brain ticking over, I could make one of these.... I had to keep looking away or she would've seen that funny smirk on my face...
It was also the last day of school today wooohooo!!!!! and us mum's had arranged to meet with all the kids down the foreshore for playing, eating and drink's after school... and as a lot of talking happened while we were making this, I had to called on another friend and asked if she could grab my boy and take him there as we were nearly finished this quilt...(I made it to the get together only a little late).. So we finally got it finished and photographed...
Then I folded it up and said Jules... Merry Christmas.... (insert loud squeal here and lots of tears...)
Thank you my friend for keeping me going... your encouragement, your perfect stitches.. and letting me be me... life without good friends would be awful and I am certainly blessed with good ones....
Now a brief how to...
Scraps.. lots of scraps... we all hoard them thats for sure but sometimes they get a bit too much and you need to do something with them.... so I pieced together random and I mean random blocks and strips... not worrying much about the size of anything just playing with the colours... and today we just started by lying them out on the floor and seeing how it would all go together... we added strips to blocks and trimmed where needed...
eventually you see your panels starting to come together....
and depending on how many random blocks you have made you come to a centre panel....
we added a inner white border panel... and then I felt it still needed a bit more pink.... so we took 6 strips and sewed then together horizontally then I cut them going up the vertical then sewed end to end to get the second border... but... we were a bit short we only had enough for 3 sides... so I said to Jules what about a pieced fourth border... yeah wow that will look great (glad she liked that idea)... did you notice the right hand side is different... tricky but there is no scraps left in pink now... and yes I cut it slightly wider as we were going for a 'bohemian scrapabulous' look, this is what Jules kept calling it throughout sewing..
Then we added the last white border, what I call double framing the quilt... not sure thats a technical term but its definitely a Hot Possum term.... its off to the quilters now and then it needs a strong pink striped binding we think...
Do you all like it... I know Jules does... I love surprising my friends with something I know they will treasure forever......
xoxo Denise
