Tuesday, January 12, 2016

Celtic Knot 2015

I know this is a little late, but I finally got the pictures from my phone onto my laptop, making it easier to do this.

This is my Celtic Knot made for my dear friends the Carpenters (Scott and Michelle).

I started it in December 2014 and finally finished it 2 weeks after their wedding in June 2015.  It was supposed to be a wall hanging.  Yeah it was almost queen size when done...

The quilt was made with 13 - 17" squares and 2" sashing.

I started off by cutting the 13 squares to 19".  Using Philomena Durcan's book on Celtic knots and a water soluble pen I traced the knots onto the fabric.  Then I made the bias tape.  Yards and yards and yards of bias tape.
***Tip to keep it under control I wrapped the bias tape around an empty soda bottle like thread around a spool***



The quilt made for Scott's son
Using fabric left over from the quilt I made when Scott's son was born I colored the inside of the knots. Okay I cut the fabric into the shapes and sewed it down.
Starting on the inside of the outlines I sewed the bias tape down.

Once it was all sewn on the inside edge, it was time to sew the outside edge down.
Most took about 16 hours to sew.


After they were all finished I cut them down to 15 1/2" and made the sashing strips.  I felt they needed more so I took Michelle's favorite colors and did a simple 4-patch for the posts (corners of the sashing).

For the backing I wanted it to be both Scott and Michelle.  Scott's family is Irish and Michelle's German, so I took the colors of the flags and did strips down the back.

After basting it was time to start the quilting.  Using my handy dandy water soluble pen again I marked a ribbon type design in the sashing.   
I grabbed the most awesome straight line marking tool (masking tape) and marked off a grid around each block to quilt.  I outlined each knot on both the inside and outside with quilting.  Yes it was a lot of quilting, but I was not done yet.
For the blank edge blocks I designed my own knots to quilt.  Yes it took hours, days, months and years (not really years) to finish the quilt with all that quilting, but I think it was worth it.
But more importantly the Carpenters think it was worth it.
Sorry the only picture I have of their quilt's label has my cousin's label in it too.