Chickopee Quilt

So I can finally show you some finished pictures of the Chickopee quilt. 

Anyone who has organised a wedding with know the hours and days and months of planning it requires. It was wonderful to be part of this very special day and give this quilt to it's newly married owners.

I've been thinking about a triangle quilt since earlier this year when Katy very kindly gave me some Thangles. Although it made the timescales a little tighter, I waited for Chickopee to arrive to make this quilt. The hot, strong colours seemed perfect and I could contrast one dark half of my triangles with a lighter half. It's such an easy way to make the squares - the accuracy of the shapes and stability of the paper made sewing them much easier.

Once I'd made them all, I lay them out on the floor and tried to place them as randomly as possible without having too many of the same colour grouped together but also trying to make a few interesting shapes by putting 2 together here and there. It was surprisingly difficult, but maybe that's just me being a perfectionist. I made sure I photographed the finished order and then piled them up into labelled rows, to make it a bit easier to store inbetween sewing.

I sewed them together in a chain to make the rows and then sewed the rows together to make the quilt, the second stage was really quick and the progress from strips to growing quilt, very satisfying.

I used the programmable text feature on my Janome to write a message on the binding, even after checking and double checking the words I did hold my breath before seeing it finished.

I used the dottie quilt backing in aqua for the back as it matched the Chickopee really well.

And despite checking the length of the binding several times after getting it too short on the last quilt I made, I somehow made the same mistake again, clever old me.

Still, I absolutely love binding the quilt, tidying up those rough edges into something perfect and neat. I save it for a night sat cosy under that new quilt on the sofa, carefully hiding my stitches and slowly making progress around the outside.

I'm really pleased with the final quilt, it was hard to wrap up and take to it's new home as I've grown rather fond of it. But there is something very special about giving a handmade gift to someone you cherish, especially on their wedding day.

And look, the bride (and her bridesmaids) had beautiful bouquets of felt flowers made by a very talented friend, aren't they stunning?