Lotta fly away - an update

I have had a very productive weekend and made great progress on my 'Lotta fly away' and the 'Countdown-to-x-mas' quilt. But first an update on Lotta and a big, big thank to all you lovely readers for your encouraging comments here on my blog and on Flickr. From the comments I gather there is a lot of love for the 'Echo' collection but also a lot of headache or hesitation when it comes to finding the right pattern.

It's true, it isn't an easy collection to choose a pattern for and I'm afraid I can't tell you why I chose the flying geese pattern other then when I saw the collection the first time, my first thought was Love and my second flying geese. The collection has a good mixture of bold and finer prints and I think this actually does make it suitable for a variety of patterns but I would say the collection benefits from patterns that showcase (at least i part) larger pieces of fabric. Another pattern that comes to mind for this collection are Diamonds, just rows and rows of Diamonds.

I pieced the entire top and am now turning my thoughts to the back. I added a border of flying geese to the top which is made of solids that reflects most of the colours used in the collection.
The fabric in this image is largely from my stock. From top to bottom, the fabrics are Kona Curry, Kona Navy, Freespirit Gold (though I am not a 100 % sure) , Kona Everglade and Kona Candy Pink.

The fabric in next image was purchased from Riverfabrics and shows Kona Black (not used in this quilt though), Kona Snow and Kona Coal. Apart from the Freespirit and Kona Curry all of the above are also available from Janette at Riverfabrics in case you are looking for coordinating solids for this collection.

Stash Note 34

The last time I had a manic glee on my face was when the Eternal Maker had the entire new Ruby Star Spring collection before anybody had it in the US. That was at the Quilt Festival in Birmingham. I was literally bouncing up and down with joy and glee.

This week I was doing cartwheels (in my mind only though) when I saw the the regular newsletter from the fabulous Seamstar here in the UK. They sort of casually mentioned that they had new fabric. I wasn't really expecting anybody in the UK to stock 'Echo' by Lotta Jansdotter. But low and behold Seamstar has the entire collection weeks before the US is to receive them where the on-line stores give arrival dates of November and December. Lotta lives in New York and is of Swedish heritage. Her design have unsurprisingly Scandinavian influence.
She's got a great website, on- line shop and has also published a book. Go and check her out.

I love this collection. It is fresh, different and light and is suitable for all sort of sewing. Quilts of course but I see also dresses and skirts.