The serviettes that needed a quilt…

When I arrived home from the Unites States back in March there was a lovely pile of Tilda Cir­cus fab­ric wait­ing for me.   I wanted to dive into it straight away but I could­n’t work out what to make.   Then, late one night, after I’d gone to bed an idea struck.  Yip­pee!   The Tilda Cir­cus fab­ric made me think about spring and East­er so I thought that some hand­made ser­vi­ettes for the East­er table would be a great idea.   Quick and easy right?   Well you’d think so…

So the next day I cleared the cut­ting table off,  cut into the Tilda Cir­cus fab­ric and whipped those ser­vi­ettes up quick as a flash.    The good ideas fairy then went into over­drive and I decided that those ser­vi­ettes really needed a quilted table­cloth to go with them.   It just made per­fect sense did­n’t it!

So I cut some more and then headed to the sew­ing machine to put all those little pieces back togeth­er and made a simple little 6 patch block.   Great!  Awe­some!  Per­fect idea and pretty quick all over again.   Well you’d think so but then the good ideas fairy went to the dark side and decided that all of the blocks being square was a bit bor­ing so I should make half on point.   Cal­cu­lat­or at the ready, I cut some more and made all of the blocks the same size and then sewed everything back togeth­er again to make that tablecloth.

Phew!   The ser­vi­ettes had their table­cloth, my work was done.   Well… not quite!   That fer­al little fairy did it again and decided that the only way to do justice to the table cloth was to quilt the ‘on point’ and ‘square’ blocks dif­fer­ently.   Far out I was just about over the good ideas fairy by this stage but, press ahead I did.   My little hera mark­er almost wore itself out with all the mark­ing.   It took for ever!

All said and done I have to admit that once those patch blocks were quilted I may have been feel­ing just a little bit grate­ful to the good ideas fairy, the table cloth looked awe­some and I only had the bor­der to go.     Silly me.… you give that fairy an inch and she’ll take a coun­try mile!    Oh yes, piano key style lines a year 38″ apart just to fin­ish it off.    Good grief!   There may have been a swear word or two in the good ideas fairy’s dir­ec­tion right about then.   I kid you not, it took me more than 10 hours to do the quilt­ing and then every single one of those lines had a thread at each end that needed to be bur­ied and snipped!

The mor­al of this story… DO NOT under any cir­cum­stances listen to the good ideas fairy.   She’s truly awful and will just lead you down the garden path.   Gran­ted she was right and the quilt­ing does look great but geesh… no oth­er work done for quite a few days!

In case you’re won­der­ing the ser­vi­ettes are just 14″ squares of fab­ric, one print and one sol­id.   Sewn togeth­er with right sides togeth­er and then pulled through a 2″ gap I left in one side.   Once turned out the right way I used the #74 stitch on my Janome 6600P (any dec­or­at­ive stitch will do though!) to sew around all four sides with the sol­id side up.

Tilda Cir­cus is in stores now.    Grab some before its gone but just watch out for the fairy 🙂

Have a great week!

 

 

 

 

 

15 thoughts on “The serviettes that needed a quilt…

  1. It’s gor­geous, but sounds like some very hard work put into it! Truly, it’s so pretty! You should feel very proud!

  2. Ques­tion?: Ser­vi­ette: Is the dec­or­at­ive stitch­ing only done on sol­id edge, just on the side that is fol­ded up? Does the whole thing then become the nap­kin when the sil­ver­ware is all taken out? If not, where is the match­ing nap­kin? Is the extra mater­i­al that is fol­ded back stitched down to make a secure pock­et? Have just nev­er seen on in per­son. Thanks for the answers ahead of time. Love all your posts and great ideas.

    1. Hi Anne

      I think some of the con­fu­sion is because out here in Aus­tralia the words ser­vi­ette & nap­kin are used interchangeably. 

      The napkin/serievette has the dec­or­at­ive stitch­ing the whole way around, it serves to close up the hole it was turned right side out through and of course, to make it look pretty. 

      I can see that the napkin/serviette looks like it it might be just for the flatware/cutlery but it’s just some fancy fold­ing. There isn’t any addi­tion­al stitch­ing to secure the pock­et. So, once the flatware/cutlery has been taken out they open up to be a stand­ard serviette/napkin.

      Hope that helps solve the mys­tery for you.

      Peta

  3. Wow, so beau­ti­ful! Thank heav­en for those middle-of-the-night inspir­a­tions! Your spring table is gor­geous, worth all of the effort.

  4. Abso­lutely beau­ti­ful fab­ric and gor­geous quilt­ing. Will this fab­ric be avail­able in the US I’ve looked and can­’t find it.

    1. Hi Sandy. I’m not sure where it is stocked in the US but you can def­in­itely pur­chase it from stores here in Aus­tralia and they will ship it right to you. Cot­ton Fact­ory Bal­lar­at has it as does Fab­ric Pix­ie, both of the ladies who own these shops are just lovely and I’m sure they would appre­ci­ate your busi­ness. X

  5. Love your ser­vi­ettes and quilt — and the quilt­ing — wow!! What a beau­ti­ful table with these new items!! In the end.…it was worth it :)!

  6. That is a gor­geous table­cloth!! Great job on that and what a won­der­ful use for the beau­ti­ful Tilda fabric!

  7. Just stun­ning! I’ve just returned to NZ from the Aus­tralasia Quilt Con­ven­tion in Mel­bourne, and your beau­ti­ful quilt would­n’t have been out of place there! Can I ask what the fin­ished size of the col­oured squares is? Thank you.

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