From the start of the year through to April I joined in with a quilt-along of Jen Kingwell’s famous Gypsy Wife Quilt, hosted by Rachel (Stitched in Color) and Kelli (Scrappy Violet). I wanted to make a dent in my stack of smaller cuts of quilting fabric, as over the years I’ve amassed *ahem* quite a lot of fat quarters/remnants, the kind of bits you buy without any plans for them because they’re pretty and cheap. I’m trying not to do this so much now, as I don’t really have the space to just keep stuff for years until the perfect project turns up.
I didn’t expect to keep up with the pace of the quilt-along, but actually surprised myself by getting all the blocks for 2 quilts (one for each of the girls) done in plenty of time. There are a lot of repeats in the smaller blocks, so I did them in batches and just did twice as many of everything as the pattern said. I’m sure I’ve got the wrong number of some, which may be my fault, but there were also definitely a few typos in the pattern instructions and layouts, which threw me for a bit, but it all worked out in the end!
When it came to piecing, I decided to complete the tops one by one, mainly so I could guarantee to have one finished top by the end of the challenge. Assembling the top is quite intense; although the sewing itself is all straight lines, and all the layouts are planned for you, it still takes quite a bit of concentration to cut all the joining strips, and make sure they match up the whole length of the quilt. I did get it wrong in one place, but no-one’s perfect. More importantly, definitely no-one would notice!
So this is Amy’s quilt top – I’m ashamed to say I haven’t started piecing Annie’s blocks together yet. Once I’ve done that, I’m going to treat us all and send them off to be quilted. I usually like to quilt my own tops, but I feel these deserve quite dense quilting to help with durability, and I don’t have the time or patience, or a long-arm machine to do them justice.
I’m so happy with how this turned out, with exactly zero fabric-planning or design-wall laying out – I wanted the blocks to blend in with the background strips rather than standing out, and they do, so yay! Unfortunately I still seem to have loads of bits left, but hopefully the strips for Annie’s quilt will make a decent inroad. It just goes to show how much easier it is to accumulate fabric than actually use it up.
Amy keeps asking if it’s done yet, so I guess I should crack on with Annie’s! If you’re looking for some Gypsy Wife inspiration yourself, you can see everyone’s quilt-along pictures on Instagram under the hashtag #2019gypsywifeqal.
See you soon!
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