Thursday 6 December 2012

Slow but steady

Progress on the quilt is not moving along as quickly as I would like. It's a big piece to hand stitch so if it comes to the crunch I'll have to reduce it in size but I'm not resorting to that just yet! I've begun by stitching in fairly close parallel rows using sashiko thread in blue or red. I've also got white and so that might make an appearance in other areas. I'm not doing the stitching in a traditional way. I tried, but the larger stitches didn't suit my natural rhythm. I also can't get on with a big needle so I've switched back to something smaller and quilting with a stitch size that I do without thinking. Plan is to add some more decorative areas of quilted pattern in later, but for now I need to get this functional stitching in place to hold it all together. I keep carting it around with me in the vain hope that I'll have an opportunity to put a few rows it. My tacking is less that adequate and already some bits are hanging off!



In the comments section Leslie asked a few questions so to answer briefly: there's no wadding with this type of quilt. Unlike traditional Welsh quilts for instance, the area where these quilts came from didn't have sheep so wool wasn't readily available. In fact cotton was reserved only for the more wealthy families. Boro quilts were often made from fabrics woven from other fibres such as wisteria! To create warmth there were just several layers of fabric instead of the quilt sandwich with wadding/batting that we're used to.

My fabrics are all laid down raw edged. I believe that this is how a real boro would be made. The use of squares and rectangles is also traditional as it's more economical than using curved cuts.

Once I've got a bit more work down on this one it'll probably feature in a video for DMTV. Enough chat for now, Amelie's snoozing so I ought to be stitching!
Talk to you all again soon,
Laura
x

1 comment:

  1. Well done for getting ANYTHING done apart from the barest of essentials! I remember my first year of motherhood as rather frustrating as I longed for blocks of time to create, until I realised that I WAS creating, the most important thing I have ever made! She is now 27!
    I also found that the only times I ever had that time to work on the portable knitting, quilting, or unread Tolstoy was when I had despaired of ever having that time and had removed said divertissment from my handbag! (and when I say handbag, I mean, of course, the gigantic tote I used to need)! The Boro looks marvellous!

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