African quilt

At last I have finished the African style quilt I started almost 2 years ago at a Quiltessential workshop, run by the lovely Ann Maynor. The pattern is very much a freeform log cabin style, so there is absolutely no measuring, which surprisingly can be a bit of a challenge when the emphasis is usually on perfect precision and repeating blocks. You just start with a wonky square or oblong, add wonky strips and just build up the blocks to suit the fabrics. The hardest part was joining the different blocks together as this involved a lot of thinking and moving and squaring up the blocks. For the border I used one of my favourite methods of using up bits of fabric by doing a piano key style. I hate ending up with loads of bits as it all seems such a waste.The quilting was also a bit of a challenge as I used my little sewing machine and only quilted at Sewing Sundays (arranged by Nottingham Patchwork Group).  

Having such funky fabrics meant that I didn't need to do any fancy quilting, it was pretty much stitch in the ditch around all the blocks. I had to try and keep the quilting quite tidy because the quilt backing was a thrifty option of a plain black cotton sheet which had been rejected  for being too small (for my son's bed). The finished quilt is now brightening up our bed in our poky little flat. Here is the quilt turned around so that you can see the blocks on the other end (the bedroom is a bit small to show both sides of the bed).