Di Ford Mystery Quilt Part 1 Finished

I received the materials and Part 1 pattern for the Quiltmania Di Ford Mystery Quilt in mid-January.  It has taken me quite a long time to complete the first part, mainly due to a head injury I sustained in early January.  I have found the hand work just great, as I can just put it down when my head starts aching.

I am new to needleturn.  I tried creating a block using needleturn before Christmas and ended up unpicking it twice.  So, it was with great trepidation that I decided to have another attempt with this project.  I have never tried making a quilt this difficult before.  It has been great fun so far.

I started off by tea dyeing the background fabric to match the background of the chintz flower fabric for the broderie perse.

I marked up the background fabric using a lightbox and a Frixion pen.   I then created bias stems and needleturned them.

Next, I appliqued the flower pot.  I had to resew the main pot to the background as I noticed that the fabric behind was puckering. I found the top section of the pot difficult to needleturn, but ended up happy with the result.

I added the swags next.  Luckily, due to the shallow curves, they were easy to needleturn.  I used papers behind the diamonds to ensure I got a good shape with sharp edges.

I was new to broderie perse.  At times I cut the fabric a little too close to the flowers and leaves.  It was quite difficult at times, to get a nice flower without cutting into the flower next to it.  I will see if I have any fabric left at the end of the project.  If so, I may redo a couple of the flowers.

Initially I had great difficulty creating the tiny one inch hexagons for the hexagon flowers. One of the lovely ladies at my patchwork group set me straight.  I was using cereal box card as templates  - it was too thick and causing my problems.  She demo'd the whole process for me.  After such an awful start, I now think I could get addicted to hexagons.  When I came to trim the block, I realised that I had appliqued some of the leaves around the hexagons too close to the edge, so they had to come off and be resewn.

I have never sewn a medallion quilt before, but I think it is vital to get the borders on perfectly straight.  If not, things will only get worse as I add additional border.  I initially tried ladder stitch and needleturn stitch to sew the mitres.  I wasn't happy with the finish, so I unpicked and machined the mitres.  I have used my set square and checked that all the corners are perfectly square.  Yahhhhhhhhhhhh. 

 

Now, I need to wait for Part 2 to arrive in March!