Kawandi quilts are made by the Siddi origiinally from Africa, community in India. The pieces are added from the outside in. This has its origins in a February 2020 Quiltcon workshop in Texas. It's very rough and ready, I'm afraid and my shoulder is still recovering - I don't handstitch as well as I did. I shall machine it to a background and it will be a kitchen chair cushion.
Meanwhile I am still struggling through quilting broken dishes - very tedious.
In the first lockdown nearly a year ago I pinned a roughly raw edge applique rainbow to the bench under my kitchen window. I vowed to throw it away on the day I got vaccinated. That day has arrived. I got my first dose. It is very intriguing to see how much the fabrics have faded, however "good" the quality.
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| 2020 |
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| Today |
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| In it goes |
To sandwich quilts I set up a foldable table in my living room and to give it a better height use furniture risers under the legs. I spray basted the Breaking Dishes quilt but I am tacking the larger Crisscross one which has 80/20 wadding and another pieced back.
I couldn't find a single piece for the back of Breaking Dishes - I pieced three pieces of Laura Ashley lightweight curtaining fabric for the centre. Although I know it's not great quality I love the weight and feel of this which I think I must have bought as a remnant at a stash sale.
Then I cut strips of my border fabric for the top and sides - I had to piece the side strips. I still didn't have enough which was an opportunity to insert a strip of pieces leftover from the top.
By the time I had finished I had just a few 3" dark squares remaining and small scraps of the pink and the wadding. I think the pink may also be Laura Ashley - her brushed cotton. The wadding is Hobbs Tuscany poly a really nice puffy quality with no kinks or creases. It makes for a very nice snuggly quilt.
There was enough to miter (I usually write "mitre" but the spell check disagrees) so I cut my pieces the length of the sides plus two border widths and a bit extra. To aid accuracy I marked my stop point a quarter inch from the corner and sewed on all four border pieces doing a back stitch at the point to stop the seam unravelling.
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| Here you can see the border piece extending beyond the edge of the top. |
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| Sewn seam with back stitch at point |
Having attached all four border pieces I drew a 45 degee angle from the marked point.
Then I aligned the adjacent borders to form a point and sewed along my drawn line taking care not to catch the seam allowances but again to stop at the point.
All that is left is to trim and press for a nice neat finish.
I finished piecing all the HSTs into broken dishes; there are even more than I thought.
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| Broken Dishes unit |
I put them all in a bag and stirred them round before laying out.
This view includes the two spare star blocks. In the final arrangement I took them out. Now, looking at this, as I have only joined a few rows I think I shall leave one in.
After the concerted effort to complete my "CrissCross" top I have been catching up on minor jobs, clothes mending and altering for one but also adding the remaining jelly roll strips and border to the top for Carolyn Forster's Big and Utility Stitch Workshop. This will be a sample piece but not this January as planned - I hope to rebook next year when I'll get round to sandwiching it.
I thought I was short of HSTs for Criss Cross but over produced so I am piecing them into Broken Dishes.
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| Broken dishes: these are all light/medium or light/light medium shades. More variations to follow. |
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| Moda Jelly Roll top |
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| Detail |
