Wednesday 14 March 2012

Quilt project: Vintage Laura Ashley


Now that my quilt is finished I have another one lined up to make already! Recently my grandma has been sorting out some of her things and she has tried all sorts of crafts over the years. She has found a quilt which she started to make years ago and has asked me to finish it for her. It was bought as a kit for a single bed in Laura Ashley in London in the late 1970’s, and I think it cost £10 at the time, I even have the two bobbins of cotton bought at the time. As you can see it has some way to go. I have already cut up a lot of card to make the hexagons and put some of the patches on. I need to finish up all of the patches and then stitch them to the main quilt. I think it is going to look very pretty when it is done.

Quilt as I received it

Quilt and hexagon pieces


UPDATE: I have now put all of the fabric onto hexagons. Last week I laid everything out on the floor to work out what order to stitch the rest of the pieces. It took a few attempts to work out what was the best orientation for the part already made and once I had established this I was short alot of hexagons. I seem to have lots of the white pattern and not enough of the pink. 

First orientation - not enough hexagons

Second orientation - better, but not enough of certain patterns and still missing some

plan for the layout at one end, ignore the colours I was working on the number required.

So I had a think and decided to buy some more fabric in order to replace the missing pieces. I wanted a fabric which was mainly pink as that would work best with my plan.
I couldn’t really find anything and was considering a gingham or a dotty print, but didn’t think my grandma would like them very much. Other patterns seemed too ‘floral’  or ‘rosebuddy’ and did not fit in with the existing patterns. I didn’t want to use a plain fabric because I thought it would look wrong introducing a plain so late in the design.
In the end I came across a vintage piece by chance on esty. I saw it and thought ‘this is perfect’ the correct shade and pattern and is actually very similar to one of the patterns already in the quilt. It is from a seller in America so I can’t wait for it to arrive. I hope the size works out ok as I need to get 60 hexagons from it.

See post part two for the finished item.