Welcome

Welcome to Vicarage Quilts - thank you for visiting.

I offer several services: longarm quilting, patchwork and appliqué workshops and small items made to commission. In the past I've also made quilts to commission as well as Church or School banners for Walking Days and permanent display.

Please visit the pages listed on the right hand side to find out more and email me with any queries.

Sunday 9 March 2014

Golden Anniversary Quilt


Emma made a lap quilt for the Golden Wedding Anniversary of some friends of her parents, and this weekend I quilted it for her: no time to wait around as the anniversary's in a week or so.  The fabrics are in lovely spring-like colours, all very fresh.


The backing fabric is a coral batik, very luscious!  You can see it here on the take-up roller.  In the centre of the quilt is a foundation-pieced heart. 


Emma asked for hearts in the quilting initially, but the fabrics are all so heavily patterned that the quilting wasn't really showing up very well.  I changed to wiggly cross-hatching in the corners, curvy echo quilting around the edges, a bit of custom work in the central block and a large feather wreath on point in the main body of the quilt.


In the early morning light the quilting shows up in relief very nicely here - it's a pity you usually have to look at the quilt from a funny angle to see it!


 The quilt's with Emma now, being bound in a hurry...


... here's hoping the recipients like it!

Saturday 1 March 2014

Hong Kong Quilt


Believe it or not, this quilt was started in Hong Kong thirty years ago.  It came back to the UK as a patchwork top, in a carrier bag from Oliver's of Hong Kong, when its owner and her husband returned after two years there with the British army.


It was pieced by a Chinese lady, partly on a treadle sewing machine, and contains fabrics from dresses belonging to Sandra and her little girls.  For thirty years, it's been in its carrier bag in a wardrobe - until Sandra realised I had a quilting business, and asked me to quilt it for her.


It's a substantial top, not least in size but also in the fabrics used - they aren't all patchwork cotton weight by any means, and some of the seam allowances defeated even my beast of a machine - there was a lot of swerving around the bulkier areas where several points meet!


It also had a rather cavalier attitude to the notion of geometry - nothing was really straight, or perpendicular, or even matched up.


However, what the maker lacked in technical expertise she made up for in the lovely exuberant colours she chose for each tiny hourglass block: it really is a bright and cheery quilt that makes you smile.


This quilt was rather a labour of love.  I had to repair a few patches and re-sew the odd seam before I started.  The quilting pattern I originally chose had to be unpicked because the extra fullness in the quilt top really didn't agree with it, and I needed to re-think, unpick, and then select a pattern that allowed the fullness to go where it would...  The odd angles meant that square corners weren't really an option, so after the go-ahead from Sandra I cut each corner on a curve before binding the edges of the quilt top with a faux-piped binding in complementary fabrics.


Hopefully it won't go back into its carrier bag!