St. Catherine's School Quilt - FINISHED!

I'm going to be sharing not one but THREE quilt finishes this week - phew! So watch out for more posts - but in the meantime...

I wrote about this project a few posts ago here. It is a commission for an Edinburgh primary school to commemorate their 50th anniversary.

I really had a lot of fun making this, despite it being quite a bit of work. I especially love the 'flower garden' area above which is needle-turn applique and hand quilting.

St. Catherine was the saint who was condemned to be tortured on a spiked wheel but it broke at her touch (so the legend goes). Sounds like a happy ending but Wikipedia tells me that after that she was beheaded, oh dear.

Anyway the 'broken wheel' is the symbol of St Catherine and therefore the school. The children have a school garden so the flowers growing from the broken part of the wheel were to symbolise this, but I like to think of it as a healing symbol (after all the torture and bloodshed in the story).

The design of the quilt was a joint effort between myself and one of the teacher's Morag (who is also one of my students). It was Morag's idea to commission the quilt and she talked the rest of the staff into it (thanks Morag!).

We have made the wheel representative of the school year by the colours of the rainbow stripes between the spokes and also by the hand quilting in each one (oak leaves for autumn, a bare tree for winter, etc.). The summer break occurs where the wheel is broken.

The 'C' in the centre is the school logo. 

In each corner I've put an aspect of education, so a globe (not as hard as I thought in the end - thanks for all your suggestions after my last post everyone!) ...

... a book. I had a bit of fun with this, using my last scrap of Moda Hometown fabric. I've managed to include a name that will be familiar to any serious quilter but lost on everyone else - so like a secret code!

And lastly an abacus! I think the buttons are fun and hopefully the children will agree.

Learn, Inspire, Grow is the school motto, embroidered here around the wheel. 

You can also see a little of the FMQ in the photo above. I outlined most of the Blueberry Park 'scruffy daisies' with free-motion quilting after straight line quilting around the wheel and wheel sections. I had been thinking about hand quilting around the remaining daisies but in the end I thought it was getting too busy (that is definitely the reason and not at all because I ran out of time...).

I used Aurifil 50 throughout for piecing, applique, machine quilting and FMQ, and DMC perle cotton 8 for the hand quilting and embroidery.

Lastly I embroidered that dedication around the top of the wheel. It reads 'gifted to our school by Veronica Halloran, head teacher 1973 - 1997'. Mrs Halloran generously gave a donation to the school for commemorating the 50th anniversary and this is what paid for my quilt.

The quilt was unveiled last Friday after a full catholic mass by the Cardinal of Scotland in the school's parish church, which I attended - fascinating stuff if you have been brought up a strict atheist. I was particularly interested in all the Cardinal's hat changes! He did look quite splendid in his scarlet robes and his big shepherd's crook, and the children's singing was wonderful. I actually found it all very moving.

At the end of the service the current head teacher invited myself and Veronica Halloran up to the front to unveil the quilt for the first time (I had made a curtain to cover it). I was very pleased with the gasps from the little children when they saw the quilt and Mrs Halloran seemed genuinely moved (I had taken the quilt in to Morag a few days before and one of the other teachers who saw it then had actually started to cry -always a good sign I think!).

I got a chance to speak to Mrs Halloran after the service and she is actually a quilter herself! Morag and I didn't know this but it has made me so happy because only another quilter can really appreciate the time and love that goes into all those stitches.

The quilt will now hang permanently in the school reception area. I love the idea that it may inspire some of the children through it's colours and imagery, and that one day, when they are grown-up, they may remember it and pick up a needle and thread themselves.

St Catherine's School Quilt

I have a couple of different quilts on the go at the moment which aren't for publication so I can share some WIP posts about them. This first one is quite exciting as it's the first public commission I have ever had.

One of my students, Morag, is a teacher at a local catholic primary school, St Catherine's, which is coming up to it's 50th anniversary. An ex-head teacher gave them some money to commemorate this event and Morag suggested getting me to make a quilt to hang in their reception area. I was really touched and honoured to be asked and said yes straight away.

Morag and I worked on the design together and I came up with this plan above. Part of St Catherine's logo is the broken wheel that St Catherine was crucified on (not an auspicious start I know but stay with me!). We decided to make the wheel representative of the school year with the broken spokes being the summer break. The different areas between the spokes are coloured to represent the seasons and they will be quilted with images to enhance that. 

There will be an image in each corner to represent different areas of education and the children have a school garden so flowers are growing out of the broken spoke (which I like to think of a nice healing image). The 'C' in the centre is the other part of the school logo and 'Learn, Inspire, Grow' is the school motto. I will also be adding the name of the ex-head teacher around the wheel somewhere in the quilting.

I started putting it together a couple of weeks ago by making a life size template to work out the size of different elements (it will be around 1M square). I then pieced the rainbow stripes and the spokes between them above.

It took a fair bit of 'fabric engineering' to work out how to make the wheel but here it is all laid out ready to be top stitched down along with the drawing to give folks on IG an idea of where I was heading. The outer and inner circles and the broken spoke are all lined and the curvy outer bits have had their edges turned under using a card template and tin foil. I have an abhorrence of raw edge applique with a zig-zag edge so, though this is machine applique, all the edges are turned under :)

Turquoise is part of the school uniform so the background is a pale turquoise Blueberry Park fabric (courtesy of Karen Lewis herself - thanks Karen!), I was going to use a solid fabric but I thought these 'scruffy daisies' worked so well and I plan to quilt around some of them.

All the other decoration will be by hand so I began stitching the leaves using needle-turn applique at the weekend. The stems will be added with hand quilting.

I took the photo below yesterday when I planned to write this post, but I got distracted (by my other project!) and ended up finishing all the flowers in front of the TV last night (see top photo). I LOVE the flowers! I adapted flower patterns from all the seasonal garland cushions I have been making for Today's Quilter this year.

The 'C' looks a tiny bit wonky to me and I am considering unpicking the circle and rotating it a tiny amount to the left - what do you think? But on the whole I am pleased with how it's looking. Though now I am on to the trickier bits in the corners. I plan to use buttons for the abacus and text print for the book but I am a bit stumped by the globe! I guess I will just have to applique land shapes on to sea - any other ideas folks? If only I had some globe fabric!

But I am working to a deadline as the anniversary is at the end of November and includes a special mass and a visit from the cardinal! I am also making a curtain so we can have a proper unveiling!! Very exciting, though I think I am more worried about the technicalities of producing a small working curtain than finishing the quilt!

I will write another post after the event so you can hear how I got on and see the finished quilt in situ.

Three Little Pigs Quilt

 
Earlier this year I made a version of my Red Riding Hood Quilt as a commission. I was photographing it in the shop when one of my customers came in, saw the quilt and got very excited. Catriona completely fell in love with the wolf and the trees and the next day she was back to ask me to make one for her.

But she wasn't interested in Red Riding Hood, she just wanted the wolf, and also a hot air balloon. She had been wanting to make this cushion for a while. I had put this on as one of my first classes last year, but it was too early in my craft studio's lifetime and I didn't get any takers! But Catriona really wanted a hot air balloon cushion and came along with an idea for a quilt that incorporated it.

I have to say that I have really enjoyed working in collaboration with Catriona on the design for this quilt. We've had lots of meetings in the shop over the last six months, refining the design and deciding on fabric. I have tried to incorporate all her ideas, including her final request - that pile of logs above (which was a bit of a challenge!) for a snake finger puppet she has at home to hide behind.

And in return she has sought and found all the special fabric I needed, such as the Heather Ross gnome fabric which I have always wanted to get my hands on. The winter tree above was machine appliqued and has snow made of white perle cotton 8 French knots, beads and white felt.

The spring/summer tree has French knot blossom all over the Cloud 9 fabric and the tree trunk has my usual ladybird behind it's secret door, one of the features from the original that Catriona wanted to keep. We did think about having 4 trees, one for each season, but it was going to spoil the over all composition and make the quilt too big.

And here's the hot air balloon, it is machine appliqued but the rigging is hand embroidered, so it is a bit of a hybrid of this cushion and this quilt. The pig looks a little out of scale here but at least he is making a swift getaway from the big bad wolf! The felt clouds are topstitched on to the perfect sky fabric that Catriona found.

She also bought this gorgeous David Walker Bear in the Woods fabric (which I am going to try to order for the shop I love it so much!). I machine quilted round the trees, balloon and clouds with my amazing new Pfaff and it's integrated walking foot - I could never have managed this with my old machine!

The autumn tree is another feature Catriona wanted to keep from the original quilt, but she supplied the toadstool fabric for the trunk and found more Kokka Red Riding Hood fabric as I didn't have a whole wolf left on the piece I had.

The pigs can hide from the wolf behind the autumn tree and up in the summer tree, as well as behind the logs. It's a good job because the wolf looks really hungry!

Just before I handed the finished quilt over I realised I hadn't made a label! So this was quite hurriedly drawn and applied. Bailey is Catriona's cute little 2 year old boy who I hope will enjoy playing with this 'activity' quilt.

Catriona made all three pigs after attending a 'felt animal' class with me. She wanted each pig to wear a different coloured, checked neck scarf, but then we realised the pigs didn't actually have necks! The bandanas were a compromise and one of the hardest things to make on the whole quilt!

The gruffalo was made from one of Bailey's old pyjama tops and the owl is from an Alexander Henry home decor fabric that I bought in New York 3 years ago (good job I bought plenty as this owl has been used on all 3 quilts!).

Everyone's back in their places here with the gruffalo ready to fly away in his balloon. This is the third of these Fairytale quilts I have finished. You can see the first here and the second here.

I started this properly in August, and have been working on it in between other projects since then. Luckily Catriona wasn't in a mad hurry and was more concerned to get it the way she wanted it. I am glad to say that she is very happy with the finished quilt!

Spot The Difference

Seeing as it's the Easter Holidays I thought it would be nice to have a 'spot the difference' competition to help keep your kids busy while they are off school. So I completely re-made the Red Riding Hood quilt that I made 2 years ago for the DQS9 just so we could play a little game!

I am, of course, kidding you. I did re-make the quilt (new version above) but not just to keep your children occupied!

I couple of months ago I lovely lady who reads this blog (Hi Christina!) saw the Red Riding Hood quilt (original version below) and asked if I would make her one exactly the same for her little girl. We decided on a price we were both happy with and talked about a few changes to make things a bit quicker for me and then, once I had my most pressing swap deadlines out the way, I started making it.

I finished it on Tuesday and it is now winging it's way across the Atlantic.
It is the first time I have tried to re-create anything. Luckily I still had enough of nearly all the fabric I had used in the first quilt (I am such a hoarder!). Including a full wolf and little red from the Kokka fabric I had bought especially the first time round.

Little Red and the Alexander Henry owl (made from home decor fabric), are both detachable and 'live' in little pockets.

As in the original, there is a little ladybird behind a secret door.
One of the main changes with this new quilt is that I machine quilted it to cut down the time (and so cost). But there was still a lot of hand finishing. All those felt apples were hand sewn. And as I had run out of the red apple fabric I used the first time, I had to sew a lot more on this time!

I had been a bit tricksy with the first quilt (showing off mainly - it was my first DQS!), and made some of the leaves as little 3D quilt leaves (they even had wadding inside!). But in the end they just looked like they had been appliqued. So this time I needle-turned them, then added blanket and running stitch afterwards to get the same effect.

Last time I used curved piecing to make the tree tops, but as that was pretty much hidden by the trees (and is always a bit hit and miss as far as I'm concerned), I needle turn appliqued the tree tops as whole circles this time. So, yes, lot's of hand sewing!

So let's take a look at the answers. Did you spot the differences on the holly tree?

Above is the new, and below is the original. I actually much prefer the new one. I outlined the leaf and the centre vein with backstitch instead of using a row of seed beads, and I think the leaves stand out much more. The berries are a better size too. And the trunk is also a totally different piece of fabric (surely you got that one!).

The owl has moved to a higher perch in the Autumn tree in the new version, above.

Here is the original apple tree, a lot less apples to sew on with this sadly missed fabric! Plus in the new one the apples are falling and landing on the other side of the trunk.

So how did you do?
Well I did very well, as I actually got paid for making a quilt, and, while I was photographing it in the shop yesterday, a customer came in and fell in love with it and has commissioned a version for her little boy! But I've told her I can't start it till July - I need to give my hands a good rest first!