Day: May 16, 2022

Poppy Field #2

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Poppy Field #2 – Top (In Progress)

I had a second set of Bali Poppies strips – Poppy Field – which I held back from the previous quilt. With this quilt top I’ve started laying out strips – the plan is to have the strips on an angle across the width of the quilt top. I started with a long strip – at the moment I’m working my way into the top right corner, then I’ll pick up and work my way to the bottom left. I want the quilt to be about 46″ wide by whatever length it turns out to be.

I’ve elected to do mitre joins (rather than blunt ones) – that may not have been the best decision in this situation. I’m also alternating the direction of the joins – which means some are almost vertical and the next horizontal. I’m not sure the visual effect I was hoping for is going to materialize – I won’t be able to tell until then top is nearly assembled.

I’m having to piece this project one strip at a time, making sure I get the join direction correct and the join position somewhat interesting.

As I get further along I’m planning on inserting “diamonds” into the dark blue background. I may have to appliqué them in order for them to look like diamonds. I have a hunch that if I piece them into the background with mitre joins they’re going to look quite odd!

We’ll see how it turns out.

Poppy Field #1 – Finished

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Once I got rolling again on piecing the quilt back, the quilt went reasonably quickly. I’d already set up an embroidery (320mm x 320mm) to quilt the project – using my “grand dream” hoop – 360x350mm. The hoop is “reversible” – the machine stitches out the right half of the embroidery design, then you rotate the hoop to stitch out the second half. So all I needed was to execute 16 repeats of the design. The quilting turned out quite nicely.

Poppy Field #1 – Top

Then I stitched the sashing “in-the-ditch” using a navy 50wt thread adjacent the dark blue so the stitches are barely visible. After I trimmed the backing, I had enough leftover fabric to use as binding. I’d initially thought I’d turn the binding completely to the back, but in the end I liked having 1/4″ showing – it added interest to the quilt top. Then I hand stitched the binding to the back. It blended in perfectly; you hardly notice it at all.

Poppy Field #1 – Back

Now I have the choice to display either side of this quilt – I’m almost tempted to show the back of the quilt in Parrsboro!