Letters Home Quilt
My Letters Home quilt is finally finished. This was a personal quilting project that I started in 2023. I had started dabbling in designing foundation paper piecing patterns earlier in 2023 and had a released some FPP patterns sporadically. Towards then end of 2023, I lost my sewjo in a big way and could not find inspiration in anything. So I started creating more foundation paper pieced blocks. Each 6 inch block gave me a sense of achievement and helped hone my skills in designing foundation paper piecing patterns.
The number of blocks grew and then I had to think of a way to use them. So I decided to turn them into a sampler quilt. My original goal was 100 blocks but as I started to put the blocks together, I felt it needed another dimension. So I added some applique blocks to the mix.
The Letters Home quilt was named as such as I was feeling nostalgic during this period. A yearning for simpler times against the stress of modern life. It was an appreciation for nature, memories, holidays, cups of tea and pretty teapots.
I set the blocks against a 1 inch dark neutral sashing as most of my blocks have light coloured backgrounds. I added a simple border of rectangles cut at 2.5” x 3.5”. I generally don’t make very big quilts and made the mistake of hand quilting (with perle 8 thread) this and it has taken me almost 6 months, quilting on and off to get it finished. I first quilted along either side of the sashing - horizontally and vertically then went back and did some light stitching within each block. Mostly it was outlining the shape in each block. I quilted random arcs in the border.
Since finishing the quilt top back in April, I started a new series of FPP blocks. I am yet to have enough for a quilt but I hope to add to the collection and set it against a different layout.
I used perle 8 thread to stitch down the binding. I don’t always do this but decided to stitch it this way to add to the whimsy.
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