Essex Air Ambulance Cheque

The Dovercourt Quilters had a Quilt SHow on the 15th and 16th September to raise funds for Essex Air Ambulance. On the 24th October we handed over a cheque for £1060 and here are the pictures.

Sewing Machine quietener

My sewing machine is relatively new and doesn’t really make much noise, but I have always intended to make a mat for it to sit on. This helps to deaden any sound, protects the table and seems to hold the sewing machine in place better As most of the sewing machine mat will be hidden underneath the machine, I chose a really simple pattern for the patchwork. I rather like this quilt block because it can give the illusion of squares behind squares. My sewing machine base is broadly 8” by 16” so I made two 8” blocks and sewed them together to give the required size. The fabric came from my scrap pile and I chose white plus three fabrics that were basically light, medium and dark. Fabric requirements for both blocks are four 4.1/2” squares of the dark fabric, four 2.1/2” squares each of the white and medium fabrics and eight 2.1/2” squares of the light fabric. Lay the patchwork squares out as shown with the dark squares alternating with four patch units made with the other fabrics. Sew the small squares together to make the four patch units first and then sew the four patch units to the dark squares. Make two of these quilt blocks and sew them together. Layer them with slightly larger rectangles of batting and backing fabric. Here again I was able to use scraps. The simplest method of quilting would be to stitch in the ditch along the seam lines but there’s no need for a huge amount of quilting as this will be sitting underneath your sewing machine – unless you want to use this for quilting practice, of course. Trim the edges of the sewing machine mat and attach binding as for any quilt. I used standard 2.1/2” strips of fabric for the binding, although for such a small project I could probably have used a smaller width of strip. Sorry the pictures for this did come out.