First commission

Yes I do have my first commission for a quilt. My lovely colleague Annette would like a quilt made by me! How exciting is this. She really loved the colours of the Mod Aqua quilt and as I happen to have made another quilt top of the same fabric (so technically it is not quite a commission) I offered to finish this in time for Christmas (no pressure there....). That does remind me that I have to set up my online shop this weekend too.

Mod Aqua II (yes it is not very imaginative) looks like this:

I made use of the entire aqua pallet of the collection this time in large stripy blocks. The quilt is huge with 2.10 by 2.10 (this 82 by 82 inches). I will create the back largely from the brown pattern and the mixed colours with bright aqua binding.

I think I will quilt it along the strips and will add some detail around the aqua flowers again like I did with the first quilt.

Everybody have a lovely Friday.

Cranberry Crush

The trouble with Winter is that I don't have enough daylight hours during the week to take photos of my fabric, Quilts of those that are "work in progress" and the weekends always seem to be to short.
Which means I can't really update the blog much during the week as nobody wants to read an essay without pretty pictures. But I have a cunning plan and haven taken lots of images today in the freezing back garden so I can use them during the week to update the blog (really should have thought about it earlier....) 

I have been busy working on several fronts as I have about 3 project I am working on at the same time. But for now it's a progress report on the Innocent Crush quilt that I actually have renamed to Cranberry Crush owing to the lovely cranberry shot cotton I am using as a solid with this quilts.

So far I have finished 3 rows of the Zick Zack design and another 2, perhaps 3 are to come. Hopefully by the end of the week the top will be finished.

I do love the design and colours and I think it is quite autumnal with a hint of Christmas to come !
I ordered even more of the Cranberry Cotton from Oakshott Fabrics  as I also want to use it for the back. I based this design on Denyse Schmidt's "Big Zip" Quilt from her book "Quilts".

Doesn't that look gorgeous

All cut up and ready to be sewn....

and more goodies arrived from this most wonderful etsy shop

What I am working on now

I am going to cut up the Innocent Crush half yard bundle I got and combine it with this gorgeous and luscious cranberry coloured solid from Oak Shot fabrics. This is a great company and they have been incredibly helpful. The range of colours and fabrics are truly stunning. I think this quilt will be a large one in a zickzack kind of way.

Innocent crush with Cranberry

And look what I bought at Tikki last Saturday !
I call the little ensemble Hey Sailor! Not sure what to do with it, perhaps a runner for my table or a bag or perhaps a quilt. Any idea anybody ?

Hey Sailor

Sleeping beauty

Now I am up to date and after this post I will to report on progress of the quilts rather than just "showing off" the finished pieces. This is the latest finished quilt and it is from Heather Ross' most wonderful latest collection Far Far Away II. I have seen many wonderful quilts made from this great range over the past months and in particular love the versions from Rita at Red Pepper Quilts and Ashley at Film in the Fridge.

I made a baby quilt from the Aqua Palet (again Aqua!) made of squares with a sashing  in a very soft cotton in Tangerine. The back is made from Kona  in Ash and the Tangerine fabric from the sashing plus some left overs from fussy cutting the squares.  I do love using leftovers in this way.

The squares are 5x5 inches and the sashing about 3/4 inch. 
The quilt is 32 by 36 inches in size.

This is probably my favourite quilt. Not much more to say there.........



Far Far away



This quilt is available in my on-line ship Sold

Flowers and stars

This quilt.......cost me a lot of nerves.  I was very difficult  to make and I was perhaps a little bit over ambitious to tackle a quilt with so many inset seams early on. 'Flowers and stars' uses a design from Kaffe Fassett's book 'Country Garden Quilts'. I love the way the intersecting points of the blocks form stars.

Flowers and Stars

I used a lot Kaffe Fasset and Philip Jacobs fabrics again here but changed the design somewhat as I don't like the border around the original quilt from the book. I wanted to make it really big so I thought I create 36 blocks instead of 25 but that plan quickly (very quickly) went out of the window.

I cut an enormous amount of fabric and I think I spend a whole day doing it. Then came the problem about where to lay it out. At first I my bed as a design board as one doesn't have to bend down so much. I then realised that I couldn't move it without having to start from scratch (and I had to sleep at some point). Well I thought I was clever and bagged each block of the 25 in a separate bag. But that didn't work so I ended up having the re-design it anyway. 

The first block I sew took me a staggering 75 minutes, and the second and the third. At that point I was getting a tat frustrated. So I left it for a while. Then I picked it up again and my block sewing time became somewhat shorter but the thing was still frustrating and I wasn't sure about it at all.

So I left it lying in my spare room for weeks giving it dirty looks whenever I went to the wardrobe (so really every day..) .

Then my sister called and announced that she and her family would visit which meant the nightmare-quilt-in-the-making either had to get done, binned or vanish in some other shape or form. So I gave it another go and surprise surprise I managed the sew the remaining 2/3 of it in two afternoon sessions. I have absolutely no idea what happened in the meantime but something must have clicked in my brain and I finally mastered those horrible inset seams.

Needles to say now I absolutely love it and am already planning to do another one in very dark and moody colours .

The finished size is 1.6 m square or 63 inches square.
I bought most of the fabric for this quilt at cotton patch and Tikki London.

I fussy cut flowers for most of the blocks and love in particular the Bekah and the Brokat Floral designs. The Stars are mostly made out of two contrasting shades of dots.

No 4 or 'Mod Aqua'

I love this fabric and the quilt and can't say it often enough but I won't bore you with endless repetitions. One morning some months ago when I checked my e-mail, delighted about the Hawthorn Threads newsletter, I spotted the new range of fabric from Robert Kaufman called 'Mod Green Pod Free to Grow' (what a Name !) and what can I say... I went right away onto the side and order copious amounts of it in the Aqua range. What I so love about this fabric is the wonderful combination of aqua, brown and yellow and also the slight retro feel to it.
I bought so much fabric that I made two enormous quilts of it. One of which is finished, the other one in waiting...(to be quilted).

For this quilt I chose the most simple design in order to showcase the fabric best. Basically  4 large pieces of fabric interrupted by a few yellow and brown strips.
Whilst the sewing of the quilt was rather easy and done in a couple of hours I spend more time on the quilting which is quite elaborate. I chose for each fabric a different quilt design that I thought suited the pattern of the fabric best. I quilted around the aqua flowers for example and also around the middle of the bloom. The large area of the petal fabric was free motion quilting that I simply drew on the quilt with a pen and then quilted along the drawn line. I also used three different colours of quilting yarn aqua, brown and yellow.
The quilt is rather heavily quilted and is therefore perfect for a bed spread.

Size: 205 cm square/86 inches square

No 3 or 'Double Cream'

I bought the fabric for this Quilt at Liberties in London during the Quilt exhibition at the V&A. It was a pack of fat quarters all in creams and I loved the elegance of it. The idea behind the quilt was to have something soothing and calm to put on by bed. It is also a quilt that goes with anything and is very contemporary.


The fabric for the top is from Moda, Collection Muslin Mate. I made blocks of diamonds that I  arranged so that a darker shade of cream offset a lighter one. This brings the diamond design to the foreground.
As a backing fabric I used Bar Harbour by Polly Minick & Lauri Simpson from Moda. This is a lovely soft fabric in blue and cream dots and strips. It really feels incredibly soft. This gave the whole quilt quite a Nordic/Scandinavian feel to it according to Tina from Tikki Ltd. in Kew. And she must know as she is Finish !

I used 8 different patterned fabrics in various shades of cream in 16 blocks with inset diamonds.

and here are the photos of the finished quilt. Unfortunately white or cream fabrics are notoriously difficult to photograph. So apologise upfront for the quality.

One more for the stack !

Quilt No. 2 or 'Lucas' Quilt'

This is my third post and I really am starting to enjoy this. Still some catching up to do with the finished quilts but I am hoping to get this all done today and tomorrow so I can start writing about my new projects. So please bear with me.....

The second quilt I made was basically the same in terms of design as No.1 but I used instead blues and increased contrast by adding green and white. I made this for my friend Angela's first born Lucas and it made me feel really good to able give her something handmade.

I used again Kaffe Fassett and Philip Jacobs fabrics with my favourite PJ fabric being Lilac Rose. I was surprised how well the bright green of the KF cabbage fabric worked with the blues. The binding in a dark tangerine frames the quilt nicely I believe.  

Here are the photos:

Building up a stack....

Books have arrived

I recently ordered the ' Material Obsession' books from Kathy Doghty and Sarah Fielke. They are so wonderful and will be a constant source for inspiration. The quilt from the second book that particularly caught my attention is the 'Charlotte Sometimes' one. It has a lot of appliqué but the contrast of the dark backround and the bright colours is fantastic. I happen to have a large amount of Philip Jacops and Kaffe Fassett fabrics that would be just fantastic for this. One just has to decide on an appropriate background colour. Perhaps something navy or brownish or I might go to the light side..... I am researching colour shots from Oakshotts Fabrics. I saw the company at the Birmingham Quilt fair and was rather impressed by their range. I called them up yesterday and they said they would sent me some samples so I can test the thickness an strength of them. 
That is it for now....got to go to work. More posts about the 5 other quilts I already finished this year will come in the next days. And then I am up to date.