Avery Garland Quilt

I’m so pleased that I can finally share this special quilt with you. This is my Avery Garland quilt which I made for the new issue (52) of Today’s Quilter, which comes out today in the UK.

And it made the cover!

It’s a mixture of English Paper Piecing and applique which I started back in February this year.

I had been thinking about an EPP garland quilt ever since I saw the amazing Brimfield Awakening block, but my plan was to combine it with applique tendrils and flowers.

I was able to share sneak peeks of the EPP as you can’t really tell from these images that it will become a garland.

I have to say a MASSIVE thank you to my shop manager and general Girl Friday, Jane, who cut out all the EPP papers and fabric pieces, and then glue basted them all for me. I really don’t think I would have got this quilt completed in the time otherwise (and even then I was a month late with it!).  Thank you Jane!

Even with Jane’s help this was a very time consuming quilt to make.  Funnily enough the EPP was relatively quick but stitching the garland to the background (especially the outer edge) took ages!

And then the applique stems and leaves were also very slow to complete. But I thought the bit that would really slow me down was stitching the 108 tiny circles above the flower heads. I left this to the end just in case I really didn’t have enough time.  It actually took much less time than I thought! I basically sat on the sofa for a day and a half and did them all in one go. And of course my Aurifil 80wt thread was invaluable for both leaf and flower applique and for stitching the garland to the background.

Each block is 24″ square and I did struggle a bit to find enough yardage of the right sort of low-volume fabric.  That dress pattern fabric on the right was purchased on my last teaching trip to Sweden. Working on this project a block at a time meant it was very portable and so I managed to stitch it in many different locations (including on the plane to QuiltCon!).

Then it was time to quilt it and of course I didn’t have much time left. I would have loved to have hand quilted this one but it wasn’t to be.  I was very worried that I could easily ruin the whole quilt with the wrong, or just rubbish, quilting.

I started in the centre of each block, filling it with leaves and curving stems (one of my favourite FMQ patterns). I then decided to fill the EPP part of the garland with random sized pebbles (a bit like my modern crewelwork embroidery which, come to think of it, I was probably working on at the same time!) before heading to the outside of the garland to outline the tendrils and fill the background with extra leaves and stems. This way I was able to quilt continuously without stopping and starting.  The whole thing was done by FMQ (no walking foot quilting) on my domestic Janome 9400 and with Aurifil 50wt in a subtle cream shade.

And I am completely delighted with the quilting!  I think I just got lucky with my choice and the quilt gods were smiling on me that day.

I wanted this quilt to have a scrappy vintage vibe and chose many different fabrics for the garlands, all from my stash or my store. I love the way the fabric choices make the blocks look so different from each other.

I also wanted a design element to appear where the blocks meet and I think that has worked quite well with the flower heads. I hope you will agree that the day and a half I spent on those tiny circles was worth it!

All along this quilt had been known as the ‘EPP Quilt’ between myself and the mag’s editor and team. But of course it needed a proper name and by the end of this project I couldn’t imagine ever embarking on such an arduous hand stitched journey again, so I thought I better put my name to this particular garland, hence the ‘Avery Garland’.

I didn’t see the magazine cover till I got to the magazine’s stand at FOQ a week ago today and was really quite shocked to see it in such large type at the top of the magazine!! I absolutely love it though – a proper naming for my very own garland quilt block!

I do hope I haven’t put any of you off from making this quilt with the use of words like ‘arduous’ because I absolutely loved every stitch (well almost!) and I am so delighted with the finished result which is a true heirloom.

I am very interested in promoting more ‘slow quilts’ as opposed to ‘fast and easy quilts’ at the moment.  With the earth’s resources under so much pressure these days then maybe we need to think about making less quilts by volume and instead making quilts with more content. I think it is also worthwhile to appreciate that the journey is as important as the destination.

With these words I do hope you will consider purchasing a copy of Today’s Quilter and stitching your very own Avery Garland Quilt.