Following on from a terrific workshop I’ve been doing in The Stitch Club with Jessica Grady, I used one of the ideas I picked up in that to use for my offering for the annual SAQA Benefit Auction quilt, which I normally make in this quiet early part of the new year. Of course, until the pandemic burns out things will continue to be a bit quiet, but anyway I’m striking while the iron’s hot.

Jessica’s workshop was on making our own embellishments, which she lumps together in her umbrella term ‘sequins’, though they don’t necessarily glitter – we made them from bits of rubbish really – discarded packaging materials, plastic, printed material, different fabric scraps particularly lace, and bits of party glitter fabric, buttons, thin sheet metals and in my case, mylar tea bag sachets, and capturing ‘things, snippets, bits and pieces’ between heated layers of bubble wrap, all quite fascinating and had us all checking the contents of our recycling bins with fresh eyes. Though for the most part I have not needed to buy any materials for these Stitch Club workshops, it was nice to have a good variety of useful stuff I could gather in just a few minutes’ rummaging in my sewing room and stash.

One of the other students did a lovely kind of mosaic-pavement layout from pieces of glossy finished fine card, and hand sewed all the pieces down in a kind of pavement, a mosaic, of hand applique using bright embroidery threads. It struck me this would be an interesting thing to try with fabric scraps and snippets from my copious scrap bags – so I did a little sample to capture that idea, and then a few days later set about seriously using it. It is fairly time consuming – so far in about 7-8 hours’ stitching I’ve covered perhaps 40% of the surface area by stitching on each piece with straight stitches, finishing with a french knot in the centre before tying off at the back, using the neon green thread of which I still have copious quantities. The border or edge treatment is still challenging me…

Essentially this is quilting by applique, and leads to this very interesting back!! It’s clear though that whether I use a thin batting or not, there will need to be a piece of fabric on the back of the quilt with some minimal quilting of some kind holding the front and back layers together.