Tasmania Quilt

I cut out the squares for this patchwork quilt when I was about five months pregnant, and put them away because it seemed like such a daunting task to sew them all together.

Recently while cleaning out my sewing desk, I found the box with all of the cut out squares and decided just to experiment a bit with them. I started sewing rows of six which became squares of 36 and before I knew it, all of the pieces had been sewn up and I had 9 big patchwork squares!

When I placed them on the ground, I realised they would probably sew up into a cot-sized quilt. Which is fine for a little baby, but not quite adequate for an almost-12 kilo toddler.

So I found an old touristy Tasmania tablecloth with Australian animals on it and arranged the squares on that. Although it didn't look right. So I cut the squares into circles and it really worked.

I used this tutorial to make my circles extra perfect and neat.

Although if you wanted the circles with less work, you could use this one.

For the backing, I used some children's curtains I bought a while ago at an op shop, they have Australian and African animals on them... so weird!

I used some leftover squares to make the binding on two edges, it worked really nicely, I'd like to use this technique on some clothing one day.

I hand quilted around the circles and the border with crochet cotton, as it was too thick to machine sew. The thing I love most about this quilt is that I have used most of these fabrics in previous projects and I even made the pink felt when I was seventeen. 

Overall it was an enjoyable and enriching project, and I feel compelled to try something a little bigger next time!

Disclaimer: I have never actually been to Tasmania but I have some very romantic ideas of what it would be like. It seems like such a wild place, with lots of wooly beaches and deep dark woods. Someday I'll go and have an adventure there.