Quilt progress

It's as if I am destined to make this birthday quilt in a record quick time.

On Friday a delivery van arrived with a fat parcel full of fabric for the quilt back.  All the way from California to East London in four days - amazing.  I bought the fabric from Fabricworm - who has an incredible selection of gorgeous fabrics.

This is the Village Path pattern in Saffron, from Anna Maria Horner's Folksy Flannels collection.  I especially wanted this particular fabric in this particular pattern and colour, because I knew from making O's strawberry quilt that flannel on the back of a quilt is very cosy, and the colours of Anna Maria Horner fabric are incredibly saturated and rich.  Just what I wanted, and worth ordering from California to get exactly what I wanted.

The fabric arrived just an hour and a half before I had to pick up C and O from school - just enough time for me to cut it, sew it back together the right size, and then layer and pin the whole quilt on the front room floor.

The colours in this picture above are awful - you wouldn't believe that I took this picture in front of our huge bay window at about 2 o'clock in the afternoon!

And then last night, with everything layered and pinned, I could start quilting the leaves onto the centre panel.

I've cut dozens of leaves from scrap fabrics in greens, browns, yellows, reds and oranges, and I'm attaching them by quilting their veins, through all layers of the quilt, in perle thread (thank you to Dragonfly for all her late night perle thread advice last night!).  I had a tiny bit of green perle thread in my embroidery box, so I've made a start on the green leaves.  I've ordered a whole load more thread in the other colours I need from Cotton Patch.  I draw the veins on with fade out pen, and then just stitch over the lines.  Already I prefer sewing the simpler oval shaped leaves to the more spiky maple and sycamore style leaves!

Once I've sewn on all the leaves there should be very little of the cream calico panel left showing.  I'll add some quilting to the borders and then think about binding...but I shall ponder more about that later.  For now, there's a quilt to be finished.