Scrappy Skyline

When I saw that Shannon Brinkley was doing a quilt-a-long for her scrappy skyline patterns I jumped at the chance. I have loved her world map quilts for a while now, and the quilt-a-long was a good opportunity to give her Scrappy Appliqué technique a go.

It is a fun and pretty easy technique for the most part. I loved pulling fabrics from my scraps and then cutting out the London skyline. My biggest difficulty came when I needed to appliqué the skyline to the quilt top. I didn't have any stabiliser, and so trying to satin stitch or even zig-zag stitch around the outline made everything pull out of place. In the end I just did raw edge appliqué and used some Fray Check so that hopefully all the little details won't disappear over time. I also quilted over the skyline with matchstick quilting, using three different colours of Aurifil thread. 

The quilt was still looking a bit plain so I enjoyed practicing some FMQ swirls, and then went back to straight lines in the green section to try to draw the eye towards the skyline! 

I used a long hoarded fabric for the back, and resorted to stripy binding - always one of my favourites!

This quilt has been gifted to my new little nephew who was born in London - perfect!