Believe it or not the above motif on this mini quilt is the interchange of two major motorways in the UK, the M4 and the M5 near Bristol. In fact when you are in the thick of this junction it looks chaotic as the motorways are stacked four high at one point but from a bird’s eye view it’s a very different picture. Road planners obviously have a soul!!

The annual challenge this year set by the modern quilt group of the UK Quilters’ Guild is to make a 20″ by 20″ mini quilt on the theme ‘black and white plus one other (colour)’. Such a great theme as who doesn’t have white and black in their stash and frankly every colour in the rainbow and we were given complete creative freedom – perfect. The only constraint being size because they all get hung together at quilt shows.

Anyway back to the quilt, I noticed this beautiful design  as I was driving up from the south west of England I saw this wonderful shape on my sat nav display. As I had been toying with the idea of bias tape appliqué this fitted the bill completely. I’ve also been attending a six month FMQ course so I wanted plenty of negative space to play.  And as you can see play I did! As did Minty who found a new use for quilt clips as a cat toy!

I learnt that making bias tape was a bit tricksy but doable. Preferred the Clover brand of tape maker.  I just glued them into position then sewed down the sides – quick and easy. The quilting took the time but was great fun.  I got a bit cocky by this stage and decided to FMQ lines freehand in the background to give it a sort of corduroy  look. Despite marking I just couldn’t get them as precise as I wanted. You can see here that the gaps are irregular and to me really jarred with the relative precision of the bias tape. It looked even worse than this picture!

I couldn’t live with it but what to do? It struck me that as it was an appliqué piece I could just unpick the outer edges of the motif, close cut the background fabric then re appliqué to a new background piece. I then had the thought that if I quilted it before I appliquéd the motif than the background lines would look continuous. Well it worked and having put on the hanging sleeve this week it’s ready to be sent off.

Linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts and TGIFF this week with Shelley at the Carpenters Daughter that Quilts.