Last week my son was sick so spent a day at home with me. He spent most of the day lying on the sofa, watching tv, which meant I needed to find something to do. My Shipping Forecast quilt had been sitting in the corner, looking at me, so it seemed like the perfect time to get it out and work on it.

The Shipping Forecast quilt

I love listening to The Shipping Forecast on Radio 4. Before my children came along I used to stay up late, listening to it before bed. Now I’m in bed a lot earlier but I couldn’t resist the pattern when I saw it.

I never seem to finish any large sewing projects, but it looks like I might just finish this quilt!

With my son on the sofa and the puppy in his crate, I spread my quilt out on the floor. I placed the front, back and the wadding together in a sandwich and pinned the three layers together. I carefully trimmed the quilt top and batting, leaving a couple of cms so I could fold the excess backing fabric to bind it.

I had loosely added the Shipping Forecast areas with a running stitch in red so I could see them easily. With my quilt sandwich made I double checked the Shipping forecast areas, going over any which had come undone. As you can see, I had a bit of help from my puppy when he woke up.

Quilting by hand or machine?

I gave the quilting a lot of thought. I wanted to quilt it by hand along the lines of the Shipping Forecast areas but I knew it would take me a long time. So decided I would use my sewing machine instead.

I didn’t have much space but I made it work! It was quite difficult moving the quilt around but I stitched along my running stitches, then pulled out the red tacking thread.

Although I had carefully pinned my layers together the fabric did move around quilt a lot. This meant I lost some of the excess backing material I wanted for the binding. With my sewing time up for the day I took a quick photo to show my progress. I’m thinking of making some binding from a different fabric to finish it off. I can see the end in sight with this sewing project!

Gratuitous photograph of my puppy – come and play with me mum!