Tea Dyeing and Basting

I now have  'before' and 'after' photos of Part 4 of the Mystery quilt...taken before and after I tea dyed the cream triangles that I found too bright for the quilt top.  I just dabbed the tea on with a small sponge.  Magic!  SO much easier than unpicking the border and resewing with another fabric!

Before

After

I have now finished basting the spools quilt.  The basting took a good 6 hours!  I now need to decide how I'm going to quilt this monster.  I haven't a space big enough to photograph it!

Basting (In more ways than one!)

I haven't managed to do very much in the past couple of weeks due to a week of teddy making followed by a week's holiday.  I have, however, managed to complete Part four of the Di Ford Mystery Quilt.  I don't expect the fabric pack for Part 5 until the end of September, so this is now packed away until then.

It wasn't until I took this photo, that I realised how bright the cream triangles looked, so I carefully tea dyed the triangles with a sponge. Much better now!

I added an extra border to my Spools quilt.  It now measures eighty inches square, so will fit our bed nicely.  I have started sandwiching and basting the quilt using the Sharon Schamber method.  She has a couple of very helpful videos on Youtube showing this method.  I am paranoid about getting wrinkles anywhere on the quilt - front or back, so I am basting it to death!

This process is likely to take some time, as the only space I have large enough for this that is out of the way is my conservatory.  It is very hot in there during the day, so basting will be confined to early mornings! Not only is the quilt being basted, I feel like I am, too!

Last week was my 60th birthday, so I've eaten far too much cake and chocolates!  We had some lovely days out.  We visited Ypres (now called Ieper) in Belgium, and did tours of the Houses of Parliament and St Paul's Cathedral in London.  We also visited Chislehurst Caves and the quilt exhibition at Danson House.  Mike's back at work this week, so normal service is resumed!

I am a bit obsessed by spools quilts at the moment, so was very taken with this lovely bed quilt at Danson House.