Zebra's quilt

These are the toes of Zebra-girl poking out from beneath her birthday quilt. In the months preceding her birthday I had spent several hours playing with fabric, looking through online shops at possible prints and in my darkest moments of confusion putting together PowerPoint slides with swatches of various fabrics combinations for Ian's consideration (Ian always knows that I have reached crisis-point in the decision making process when I start using PowerPoint as an aid...he is filled with dread at the very idea of one of these displays which he knows must be followed by hours of careful analysis on his part...and he also pokes fun, because he says that I may be the only person left in the world who still uses PowerPoint). And finally, paralysed by indecision I decided that if the fabrics weren't perfect; if they didn't say the things that I wanted them to say to her, then I should leave doing it for now.

But then one day a couple of weeks ago my mother and I were sitting in Zebra-girl's room while she was at school and we were looking at all the loveliness of the fabrics in her curtaining hung at the window that has been altered and added to with each house move, and my mother suggested that as they was slightly ill-fitting anyway, then perhaps I could make a quilt from Zebra's curtains...this proved to be somewhat like a red rag to a bull (in the best possible way) and moments later I was standing on a chair hacking the precious fabric free from the lining with a large pair of shears, for she had stumbled upon the perfect thing. The fabric is faded and aged by the sun, holds so many memories from Zebra-girl's toddlerhood and beyond and was something that I had been loathe to take down and replace because I find the prints so lovely and nostalgic to look at.

The binding is a mixture of old and new fabrics and this combination is actually the bit that gives me the most pleasure to look at. The quilt is a very simple design: a strip of floral paisley at each end with red polka dots in the centre, and a strip of powdery blue velvet ribbon (again, salvaged from the original curtains) to cover the joins...so on that front it was a simple quilt to construct, but in terms of the actual quilting part, which I had never done before, I felt like I learned a lot (which for other new quilters I thought it may be worth sharing). Firstly, that I had never realised what a physical thing quilting is; the sheer weight of the materials and the effort of holding it taut as it goes through the machine was quite unexpected. I had always thought that quilting gloves were a rather precious affectation...now I realise that are an essential to avoid being in agony after keeping your shoulders hunched for hour upon hour as you try to keep your hold on the material steadily without the grip that a quilter's glove would provide. As it was a Sunday and the shops were closed and I am impatient I beavered on without them...but it was not a comfortable experience. Other things that I learnt (and this is from my own very limited experience...more experienced quilters may have better ways of doing things) is that one should always work from the centre on a quilt - meaning that when you begin to pin your top fabric to your wadding and backing fabric you should start pinning outwards in circles from the centre, and likewise, when marking out your quilting lines you should start from the centre too (your backing fabric should always be a little bigger than your front fabric as this allowance gives you room for the fabric shifting). I used a very light layer of basting spray to fuse the layers before pinning them with special quilting safety pins.

To bind, I machined the top side and then hand-stitched the underside. I had a friend round for one of the mornings that I was doing the hand-sewing and when she asked why I didn't just machine-stitch the whole thing I realised that as well as thinking it would be neater this way, I also felt that for it to be the quilt I wanted it to be, some of it must be done by hand. I hardly ever hand sew things and I realised what a lovely and relaxing (and more sociable!) occupation it is. I also wanted to make a patch for it and I'd read about amazing printable cotton for quilt patches, the look of which I love, but when I investigated further I realised that the printer inks don't seem to be fade or wash resistant and that the message may disappear over time - the idea of which saddened me. So instead I appliqued some roses onto my my patch and then embroidered my message and the date of giving.

I chose not to preshrink the cotton or the batting and waited to wash it until after I'd finished, so that it might gain a more antiqued look. It feels so nice to have so many favourite fabrics contained in one, hopefully long lasting, piece...the only thing I was less pleased by was that I had hoped that the batting would have a little more loft to it...and be a little more puffy once washed. I quilted it as far apart as I was instructed I could for the type of batting that I had chosen...but now I'm wondering if I should have ignored this and gone a little further apart, or if I should have chosen a different batting to start with (I went for Hobbs Heirloom).

I bought a book called The Quilt Story, now out of print (in the UK), to put with my gift. It is the most lovely story about a mother who makes a quilt for her daughter, which is used in her camps, tea parties, in the winter and on sick days and every other part of life, eventually accompanying her on a house move where it holds the comfort of being the only thing that smells like home. Eventually the quilt becomes so tattered that it is put in the loft, until years later, after it has become a home for some passing mice, a raccoon and other animals, the girl finds it and asks her mother to mend it, which she does....the messages in the book are lovely and both me and my mother were not entirely dry-eyed after first reading it.

Zebra-girl was delighted with her quilt, pleased to see her old curtains again (albeit in a different form) and has snuggled beneath it often. The canny amongst you may already have guessed that my next post may hold some mention of the making of new curtains, which for a bay window measuring 4 metres wide suddenly made the previous week's adventures with a single quilt's worth of material seem rather paltry by comparison.

I was quite sad once the quilt was finished as I had so enjoyed making it (in an aching shoulder sort of way), so it was uncannily wonderful for me that on Zebra-girl's birthday I had a note saying that there was a package waiting for me at the post office. I opened it to find that my dear friend Charlotte (whom I met at primary school, aged 8, when we were the only two girls in our entire school who had no desire to attend recorder club in our lunch hour...a mutual dislike of wind instruments that has proved to be a sound basis for a friendship spanning 23 years) had sent the most lovely and unexpected 'just because' present of a book about quilting, which she'd apparently bought for me several months earlier, but had kept for herself after it had an impromptu meeting with some small baby hands. But now we both have a copy, which makes it even more special. The book has some fantastic projects so I am now thinking about what kind of quilt I might make next (something for Dinosaur-boy I'm thinking...and I'm quite intrigued by the idea of what a hand-tied quilt might be like to make).