London, baby!

Hi everyone :) A big hello to any of my regulars, plus anyone popping by from Finish It Up Friday, TGIFF or the Small Blog Meet - wow, that's a lot of link-ups for one post!

Anyway, today I'm going to show you 'London, baby!', a table-topper I made for my mum. Back at the start of 2012 my LQS was preparing for the jubilee with a Great Britain-themed window display. One of the fabrics was the map print in Cool Brittania, which I thought was a fun idea but then thought nothing more of it. Until a sudden thought popped into my mind - I wonder if Primrose Hill is on there? You see, my mum loves London and she and my dad got engaged on Primrose Hill. Much searching of the internet yielded no conclusive results but I eventually managed to get back to the shop and found that yep, it was there!

So, I knew I would be making something for my mum! Problem was, what to make. After a bit of umming and ahhing I settled on a mini quilt, to be used as a table topper. Picking out fabrics to go with the London ones was good fun. I only realised afterwards that I had been subconsciously replicating the colour scheme of the Bliss fabric line. Woops!

Fabrics chosen, I made plans for the pattern. I had been drooling over Ashley's string quilt for quite some time, so strings it was:

When I came to actually use the map fabric I encountered a problem. Obviously the fabric had to have repeats and joins where the real London doesn't match up. Unfortunately I don't know London at all, so didn't have a clue where they were! Cue a lot of time poring over Google maps and trying to work out how to cut pieces big enough for the pattern without any geographical issues. It took a while, and I made a few mistakes along the way, but I got there!

Taking the paper off the back of the blocks was not fun. I wonder if the tracing paper I used was a bit too strong? Next time I'll try baking paper. Since the seams were not impressed with my tugging while getting the paper off, I decided to use fusible wadding to stabilise them, instead of normal batting. Should help it last!

Check out the pink carpets in our new flat!

Piecing done, I ironed the top and back onto the fusible wadding. And yes, that is a cupboard door I'm using as an ironing board. The flat was still a little chaotic, and it was the right size!

Some simple straight-line quilting around the squares and a little embroidered heart finished this project off nicely.

My first use of perl cotton! Loving it so far.

The backing. Love this print! Check out the gerkin :)

So despite the craziness of a house move, getting ready for Christmas and, of course, holding down a full-time job, this quilt was finished in time for mum's birthday. And here it is in its new home!

That's all for now! See you soon :)