Checking My Bed Of Roses

Having checked out my linen cupboard, I'm now double checking all my stored quilts.This is one of the first quilts I made back when I stated, so it must be about 15 years old now. Boy, does time fly when you're busy quilting. It feels like just yesterday.

This is a pieced and stenciled quilt. I love stenciling and all these roses are stenciled with Jo Sonja paints and textile medium.

This quilt has been enjoyed and stored and enjoyed some more and I'm happy to report that the stenciling looks as fresh as it did the day I first painted it. This is the wonder of modern textile mediums - if you follow the manufacturer's instructions, any stenciling you create will last as long as commercially printed fabrics.

 It's a two sided quilt, with pieced and stenciled blocks on the front and the quilt back is a whole cloth stenciled design I made up just to satisfy my love of all things romance and roses.

 Another thing that captures my eye, apart from the crisp paint colours, is the quilting. 

Bed of Roses was domestic machine quilted on a 1950's Elna sewing machine and I was a total newbie, just playing around. I've been fairly disappointed with sewing machines in recent years and I can honestly tell you with what life experience I have, that they just don't make them like they used to. I don't currently have a sewing machine I love, so I can't offer any recommendations. When this changes, I'll let you know. Heck, I'll shout it from the rooftops. But for now I'll just admire my determination to get this quilting done back in the day with what I had.

When I started out in quilting, I came from an artistic background and mindset, so I simply did things. No one had 'got to me' or told me that it couldn't be done or shouldn't be done a certain way. I was lucky in that I really wasn't influenced by any one or thing or brand. Nowadays when I'm out and among Groups of quilters, I'm often taken aback with the snobbish and somewhat elitist attitude that exists out there with what Quilter's Should Be Doing.

I think you should whatever you can with whatever you've got. If you wait until you have all the nice new, expensive tools you'll never get anything done.

This is the other vacuum foot I have set aside for vacuuming my quilts. It looks tougher than the horsehair one, but the bristles are actually soft. The fibres you see in the fibres here are not scrapped off my quilt top, they're from my table from before I laid the quilt down, it was covered in fluff and threads.

 As I'm looking over my quilts, I'm giving them a quick dust clean just because it's convenient. I did this before I rolled them up for storage the first time and they probably don't need it at this point.

And these are the quilts yet to be checked, I'l; be so relieved when this day is finally over.