A Doll Quilt Made With Lily

It is just over a year ago that I made a chequerboard quilt with Lily, so it was lovely having the opportunity to make a quilt with her for the Doll Quilters' Monthly swap.  The theme was to make a quilt with or for a child, so Sharyn made her quilt for Lily, and Lily did lots of the work on the quilt for Sharyn.

This was the first stage, and this is all Lily's work.  I went over to her house with the fabric, cutting board and cutter, and also a large piece of paper so I could do an actual size sketch. Once I had cut out all the pieces, Lily did all the sewing.  She has a 1945 Singer 99K hand machine.  She had never used a seam guide before, so her mum, Hannah, found some scrap material, and I showed Lily how to keep her seam straight.  By the time she had sewn about ten inches I could see she had got the idea already and didn't need any more practice.

Then Lily did all the piecing.  I passed her the pieces, she sewed them together, gave them to me to iron while she stitched the next seam... it went like clockwork, and Hannah was amazed at how quickly it was done.

Here is the back of the work.  Look at those neat seams!  

That was enough work for the day, so I then left it with Lily to do some hand sewing.  She had a rummage through her box of embroidery threads and chose the dark green for the flower stems and the yellow for the door number.

After that I didn't see Lily and Hannah for a while, so Hannah posted the work in progress to me - stage 1 of its travels, South Wales to Somerset.

The next stage was for me to add a border.  This pinky red floral print is really riotous.  It made me think of a cottage garden buzzing with bees, just right for this little quilt. 

Next I did the straight line quilting with the Singer 15K hand machine, then the free motion quilting with the 15K treadle.  For the wall, door and border I did a meandering infill.  For the path in front of the door I did a pebble design, and for the garden I did a grass design - I used completely the wrong colour threads because they don't show up against the brown fabric.

Once I had put on the binding, I stitched on buttons and beads for the little flowers.  I love the way Lily had made all the stems different heights on the flowers beneath the window...

... and the stems for this climber go right to the edge, so I put in a couple of flowers overlapping the border, blending in to the busy floral print.

Meanwhile, Sharyn had finished her quilt and it had already arrived at my house, so I went to visit Lily two days after her 11th birthday, delivered Sharyn's quilt, and got Lily to put in the very last stitches...

... sewing on the button for the door knob!

So now you know why the house had to be number 11, even though Lily was only 10 when she did all that hard work!

This quilt was great fun to make - sewn by two people, in two countries, England and Wales, with three different vintage machines, and sent all the way to Sharyn in Australia, where it arrived with the New Year!  What a great start to 2014!

Happy New Year Sharyn!

Happy New Year to all visitors and followers.  
Thank you for all the visits and comments in the past year.  Let's see what 2014 brings! 

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Linking up with Sarah's blog Confessions of a Fabric Addict for Whoop Whoop Friday
and Leah Day's blog for Free Motion Friday