175th Anniversary Quilt: March 2014 Update

Fiona Roberts reports:

At last, all 25 blocks have been stitched together!  Six members of the group met up at the Quilter’s Trading Post on 1^st March, armed with pins, tape measures and sewing machines, ready to put the blocks together.

The Quilter’s Trading Post is an Aladdin’s cave of quilting fabrics, notions and pure inspiration for the creative quilter!  

Inside the Quilter’s Trading Post

Formerly a primary school, it has been successfully converted into retail and workshop space, as well as the machine room, where two long arm quilting machines are permanently busy with a substantial waiting list.  This is where patchwork is quilted using computerised patterns co-ordinated by the experts!

Proprietor of the Quilter’s Trading Post, Emma Ablett, kindly provided a room for us to sew, as well as a very welcome cuppa.  We browsed the extensive shelves of fabrics, looking for a suitable colour for the sashing. (What a treat!)  Once we had made our selection, Felicity sliced this up into the requisite strips and added all the horizontal pieces.  Other members of the group double checked the blocks and added a few stitches here and there to secure them. 

Jenny, Helen, Kath and Felicity hard at work!

The day raced by and we left, with Helen and I each taking half of the quilt home with them, to add the vertical sashing.  This sounds simple, but every block and sashing strip needs to be re-measured to be certain that it is exactly the right size; otherwise the lines won’t be level.  I then put the two pieces together and added the border.  This was a contrasting colour, which I am not divulging, so that you have a surprise when the quilt is unveiled!  I returned to the Quilter’s Trading Post on 8^th March and left our pieced quilt top in Pam’s capable hands to be quilted professionally.  I can’t wait for the phone to ring to tell me it is ready to collect!!