Of Roses and Octagons

I am sharing today a small quilt made by me almost 3 years ago! I had no idea then what a wealth of information was available on the net, so much of this was trial and error.

It is just about 15″ across. The roses are two pieces of muslin left over from another project which is, sadly, still a UFO ( unfinished object for the uninitiated!). The pink was fabric from an old salwar which was no longer wearable. The white and green muslins came from my stash.
I remember a lot of Maths went into calculating the length of the strips at each stage and angles at the edges. And then to make accurate 67.5 degree angles on the strips using a small protractor was going to be even tougher! I was further handicapped by the fact that I had only so much of the centre focus fabric so could not play around with the size too much.
What I finally did was to make 8 strip sets, somewhat larger than needed. I cut the octagon on flannel from a newspaper template, then marked the ‘spokes’ on the flannel. Using that as a guide, I stitched on the strip sets directly on the flannel. Wasn’t easy to ensure accurate points! But I am quite happy with the result 🙂

Once the strips were all in place, I did the hand quilting. I had had the foresight to add a layer of poly fibre under the flower panel, so I could get a trapunto look to the roses.

I had great fun quilting this – I particularly love the trellis on the white strip! By the time I reached the outermost strip, I was so exhausted that I decorated only one of the corners!

But the quilt looked unfinished, so I thought I would add the prairie points which I had seen in a quilting book! But how on earth was I going to bind it?!? And then there was the back to be taken care of too, as I did not care much for the white flannel. I solved the problem by inserting the prairie points between the quilted front and backing fabric and attaching two separate bindings – one for the front and other for the back.
All that was left now was to add a few flowers and leaves to give a three dimensional effect to the little quilt. I used a double layer of the fabric to secure the petal and leaf edges. Surprisingly, these have withstood several washings!
The quilt is much faded today, but much loved still…

Author: Mads

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