First Finish of 2023 - Tea Towel Quilt

 Instagram is a wonderful place for connecting with the sewing community and finding inspiration.  I've got to credit Sharni from Lyrebird Lamb with the inspiration for this quilt - it all stemmed from seeing her Pete Cromer Tea Towel Quilt on Instagram a few years ago.

When I came accross these city tea towels by Megan McKean tea towels on clearance in Myer a few months ago I knew I needed to make a quilt with them.

I didn't use a pattern for this quilt, just trimmed each tea towel down to about 50x50cm and places them in a 3x3 placement. I did have an extra three but the colours and size wasn't doing it for me.

I quilted it using a 3 step zig zag stitch lengthened to 4.0, this created a bit of a honeycomb effect, though I've realised how out of practice I am when it comes to quilting!  What a workout.

I used one of my all time favourite fabrics for the binding, this beautiful washi tape-esque fabric by Laura Blythman in her range from Spotlight a number of years ago now.  I've been hoarding it and thankfully still have some more in my stash.  I was planning to using a black and white stripe, however didn't have enough left and given my goals for this year I wasn't buying anymore fabric when I had something suitable to use. 

The backing is a mixture of fabrics I bought when I was overseas after I finished school, meaning some of these fabrics have been in my stash for a decade or more.  I wanted to add in fabrics that reminded me of where I'd traveled and these tea towels were the prefect addition to this project which has been planned for a long time!

Overally, I'm really happy with how this turned out, its lovely to have another quilt to snuggle under - not that its needed at the moment!  I was binding this quilt in nearly 30 degree weather, which was not ideal. But I feel like thats become my thing at this stage, if I'm not trying to finish of quilt WIPs in January who even am I?