Shades of Green - part 2-

It's been a while and it certainly isn't Spring any more but my inspiration is certainly at the moment in that season. This weekend I finished the quilt top I started back in June.




And the colours make me smile and inject a dose of much needed happiness (so did by the way "Fantastic Beast and where to find them" that I watched Friday night !). There are so many Spring and a few deeper Summer greens in this quilt, all of which not so much take me back but forward to the next Spring.



And true to Spring there is the odd bit of bright pink, yellow and some pale blues and whites coming through.



I love working on a quilt like this. It is simple from a cutting point of view, just squares, but you need to think about the arrangement of the patterns and colours and you need to lay out the entire quilt before it can be assembled as the piecing is done on the diagonal rather than row by row. This by the way, in case any of my students are reading this post, is a very good skill builder quilt still using the humble square but with a more advanced piecing techniques and with a bigger design challenge.



I might baste this beauty today but quilting will have to wait a while as I have a very busy week coming up.

Happy crafting everybody !

Shades of Green - part 1 -

Would you believe it ? I actually have started a new quilt. Sunday mornings very early I run along the river. I do this all year and pretty much in any weather and there really isn't a season I don't like (though Winter is of course....well Winter) but my favourite time is May when the green left and right of the toe path is so incredibly riotous in colour and quantity that I sometimes can't actually see the river right next to it.



So I thought I must make a quilt that has all those shades of green in it. Got home, dove straight into my stash and pulled out everything I have that is green or yellow/green (you know that typical early spring green that doesn't know if it wants to be yellow or green). I recon I have easily 60-70 fabric pieces in various shades of green.



There is all sorts in there, from K. Fassett and Philip Jacobs via Flea Market Fancy to super contemporary "First of Infinity" - the motto is, if it's green and in the stash it goes into the quilt.

But all that pattern needs a little bit of order in my opinion so I am choosing squares on point in long columns for what will be a pretty large quilt.

Painted Hexagons - part 4

Finally a finished quilt top !
I say this seldom but am I glad it is finished. This was a surprisingly tedious job and whilst I am very happy with its outcome, I struggled over the last 15 or so Hexagons. It just dragged on too long.

Things looked up when I put it all together with the gorgeous newspaper print as background.

And I love how each hexagon is framed by the solid fabric which I think brings it all together. I had enough fabric fro 39 hexagons. Actually I would have had enough for a few more but not enough for another row of hexagons, so I left some of the purple fabric out as I thought I already have enough of it in here and I am not that fond of purple. 

It was a bit of an odd experience to just use the prints in this collection because I have not done this in a long time. It was sort of restrictive and possibly added to my being a little bored with the hexagon making in the end.

But I do love the way it looks and how each some of the prints change their characteristic through the hexagon shape.

And although paper piecing took a long time I am convinced it was the right decision because I would have had a lot more issues with biased cuts otherwise.

I kept the paper on as long as I could and removed first just the bits that covered the solid fabric when piecing the hexagons to the newspaper triangles and then later on once I created the diagonal rows, the rest. In this way the whole thing kept its shape rather well.

Now onto basting and quilting. But how to quilt....

Painted Hexagons - part 2-

So what did I do with those 2 inch strips ? No I did not do a strip quilt although that is on my to-do list of things. I have a couple of K. Fassett books and when looking through them for inspiration for the Bloomsten fabric, a hexagon quilt caught my eye. It is called 'Drifwood My Fair Lady' and is from Brendon Mably and you can find it in the book ' Kaffe quilts again'.

And I thought this would be perfect as I could use the large amount of newspaper print I bought as background. I changed the pattern somewhat in that I made myself a foundation paper template for the hexagons. The pattern in the book advises to piece strips together and then to cut out the 6 triangles for the quilt using a template but I find this not accurate enough. The triangles are basically cut all on the bias and loose form the minute they are cut. Sewing them on paper ensures they keep there form until the hexagons are done. Whenever I paper piece I keep the paper attached as long as I can handle it.

So the long, very long  process of paper piecing has started. Although it can be a bit tedious, I do like it as it is methodological and it is fun to see the hexagons coming together.

A flock of geese - a finished quilt-

And at last I have a finished quilt to share with you. It's going to be a picture post with lots and lots of images. And here first of all the quilt in all its beauty.

You might recall that I used wool wadding for the first time for this quilt. I was really taken aback by how much loft this batting has compared to my usual cotton batting. I do like a relatively thick wadding and use Hobbs Heirloom which is roughly as thick as the Quilter Dream Select weight. The difference between the wool and cotton batting is that cotton has almost no loft and sort of feels more substantial.

Because of the higher loft I felt I could not quilt the quilt as dense as I might have done otherwise which was a little disappointing. I originally wanted to do vertical lines 1.5 in apart and then add horizontals along the seam lines but ended up only doing the vertical lines.

I also felt that although I basted this quilt very well that the quilt top and back moved more through quilting than anticipated. This wasn't a problem as such as I chosen the backing and wadding large enough  but it surprised me. Overall I had to slow down during quilting as my machine would otherwise slip a stitch which is also something I hadn't had before (if you disregard the time when I hadn't cleaned my machine....let's not talk about that).

I quilted with a beige 28w Aurifill thread as I often do. Aurifill or Guetermann Sulky are my two favourite threads.

My backing fabric is a text print from Carrie Bloomsten's 'Paint' collection which I thought works really well with this quilt. The front has a varying colour palette of bright and sedate colours and I chose both fabrics for each flying geese block to compliment each other which I hope gives the quilt a coherent design.

The binding is a dotty red/white fabric that contrasts well with the backing and also with the quilt front and really makes me smile.

The wool adding gives the quilt an entire different feel and drape. Folded up like in the image above it is obvious how much loft this quilt really has and at first I wasn't too happy with this and almost regretted my choice  but I am slowly getting around the softer drape and feel of the quilt and am sure that when the winter comes that I appreciate it even more.

And to close a few numbers and statistics:

• 240 geese blocks @ 3" x 6" finished size makes 720 pieces of fabric stitched together

• I used the "no waste" method where you make 4 geese blocks out of one square as described in this tutorial. I chose the squares rather larger than suggested though because I always square them off with a ruler and used a bloc-loc ruler this time which really works a treat

• I used a very large selection of K. Fassett shot cottons, mattress ticking, gingham, moda cross weave and M. Dubrawski hand printed fabric

And this is it for the next 2 months or so. I am taking a summer break enjoying a bit more my photography and other non-quilting activities and will be back in the autumn.

Have a good one !

A flock of geese - part three-

I don't mind basting a quilt. Sure it isn't the most stimulating of processes when making a quilt but it is a really important one and needs to be done right to have a good time quilting.

So I put on an audio book and get on with it. For my new 'flock of geese' quilt I used for the first time wool batting that I bought by the yard from 'Creative Grid' where I also buy my large cotton batting rolls. The woll wadding has much, much more loft than the cotten batting and I am interestd to see how this behaves during quilting.

But to make sure my quilt sandwitch isn't moving at all during quilting I secured it with over 400 pins. That is even for me a lot. One for each geese block makes 240 and one in each intersection which makes a pin every three inches. One hour later I was done and hopefully find some time and motivation this week in the evenings to get on with quilting.

A flock of geese -part two-

It's been a while since I updated on the progress of my new quilt. The geese came a long fine until I had done 200 of them and only 40 were left to do.....and those took me about 2 weeks to make. To be honest, they are not tedious or difficult to make but it sort of wears you out eventually.

But I am really pleased how they have turned out. Over the weekend I played around with a few combination and finally settled on most of them flying in one direction with a few "wild ones" in between.

And there is also one entire row breaking ranks and flying into the other direction!

All I need to do now is join them and get basting. I am thinking of using a wool batting for a change for extra warmth.

A flock of geese - the start

Weeks ago I came across a flying geese quilt on Pinterest that I fell for hard. That combined with me giving away about half a dozen quilts to my siblings, prompted me to start a new flying geese quilt. One of the quits I gave to my sister is my 'Lotta fly away' and I gave the 'On point' to my brother. I love both of those quilts so I kinda thought I make myself a new one using a little of both .....

I adore the flying geese pattern and my stock of K.Fassett shot cottons, Zanzibar fabric, stash of Moda cross, gingham and ticking treasures are waiting to be made into a new large quilt with lots and lots of geese.

Let the sewing begin.

An evening with Kaffe Fassett

I recently had the opportunity to go to a lecture K. Fassett held at the City University in London. He gave a talk on colour that was organized by the 'Colour Group'  who are interested in aspects of colour - its perception, measurement, reproduction and artistic expression. They hold monthly meetings throughout the academic year and organize lectures on colour. I am not a member of this group but they do sound interesting.

Given that this is all about K. Fassett I should really pepper this post with images of colour and his creations but alas I won't. For one reason because I don't have any images of the slides he showed and I don't want to "grope" around the net to find similar ones. I will add a few images of my own K.Fasset creations but the main intent of this little post is to share with you what I learned from his lecture.

When I started quilting three years ago the first fabric I bought was K. Fassett and Philip Jacobs to make a baby quilts in colours or red and blue and like many other quilters I utterly fell in love with the vibrancy and intensity of his creations.

Luca's quilt

Since I made two more quilts entirely from K. Fasset fabric and several others where his fabrics feature amongst others. Although his colours are super intense and sometimes feel a little to much while working with them, I do always come back to K.Fasset fabrics. Frankly the 'Geranium' print in duck egg on the back of my 'Botanica' quilt is one of my all-time favorite prints.

Botanica

So here is what I took away from the lecture:

• Very few young people were at the lectures and most of the audience were around my age and upwards
• There were five ladies sitting behind me knitting and having dead serious discussion about the knitting progress - somehow I thought that this little knitting group is not much fun....
• K.Fassett sees colour everywhere and his slide show made me realize that we forget to see colour when we rush around going about our busy lives. He showed us slides mainly from his travels and really all had wonderful colour in them. I am sure he didn't go hunting for any of the images. This was normal everyday stuff; colorful plastic crates stacked up outside a shop, a market, house fronts, doors etc... I think the lesson to take away here is to be a bit more conscious when walking around and perhaps pause every now and then to "take colour" in
• He is a professional in every sense of the word
• He is driven and focused and I very much like that
• He not only designs fabric and wool and makes quilts and knits. No he also makes mosaics, needlework tapestries (huge pieces !!) and paintings
• He started of without colour. Yep, no colour, just white and neutrals. Colour eventually started to creep into his paintings until there was no holding bac
• He is a fast worker and I like that even more. He was asked by somebody in the audience how he manages to make all these beautiful things and how many people he has helping him. His answer was: "I can do a lot in a day because I don't have a nagging husband and crying children". He added that he has of course people who work with him but that creating things himself is his job and he can dedicate all his time to it because he has got people who take care of everything else (computer, travel, admin...) Pretty cool I dare say and would that not be every quilter's dream ?
• K. Fasset only hand stitches and hand knits, he does not use machines of any kind
• He knows how to market himself but I found the super frequent mentioning of his books a little annoying
• He's got a great sense of humor
• K. Fasset is 75 years old and there is no sign of stopping him - now that is impressive
• When he works with printers in the industry then the colour pallets he can use are often limited due to technical reason. He says that limitation can increase creativity
• He was born around Big Sur in California which is near Carmel and Monterey and is absolutely gorgeous and I could not understand why he lives in the UK but he said he fell in love with the place when he visited Scotland the first time. The colour he saw there bowled him over. And that is actually true, Scotland in Summer is just something else.
• I think the more grey he sees (and let's face it there are many shades of grey during our long winter) the more colour he sees and creates - it's part of his creative process
• He loves vibrancy and contrast
• He is not interested in colour theory or colour wheels or any of the theory around it (bit amusing given that he was presented with a medal for colour achievements by a group that seems to be very keen on colour wheels!)
• K. Fassett lives with his partner Brandon in North London and together they travel the world which must be fantastic

Flowers and Stars

On point - a finished quilt

So I finished the quilt and what can I say, I love it.

I used the Kikoi fabric and some of K. Fassett's stripes and juxtaposed these with Longshott Oakshott fabrics and created 9 patch blocks for which each square was cut on point. Originally I had thought to set each 9-patch block on point too but that turned out to be a little to much so I chose for a straight arrangement.

The backing fabric is a large piece of a K. Fassett print from a few seasons ago that I still had in stock and which I supplemented with a few stirps of solids in turquoise, red, orange and black from a Kona and Freespirit Designer Solids. It really works well with all the colours on the front.

I quilted in simple diagonal lines to give  the quilt stability and used variegated Guetermann Sulky threads in two different shades. For the top a thread with more greens and for the bottom one with more orange and red. I wanted the thread the blend in rather than stand out as a white or off-white thread  would have done.

For the binding I wanted to use something fun and light, yet complimentary to the overall colours of the quilt so I opted for a gingham in orange and white that I ordered at Frumble fabrics.  I am really pleased with the choice as it give the quilt a little lift.

All the fabrics used in this quilt are woven and cutting them on the bias (or on point) was a little challenging but it worked out much better than I thought. The key was to work quickly and precise and to sew the 9-patches together speedy rather than moving the pieces about forever.
The quilt measures 64" x 74" (1.63 x 1.88) which is a good sofa quilt size in my opinion.

Please find previous posts on this quilt here, here and here and if the quilt is for sale in my Etsy shop.

Meet Botanica

...or formerly known as Greek Cross. I decided to rename the quilt to 'Botanica' after a comment from my fellow Brit Bee and name companion Judith who said said that it was a 'fabulous botanic quilt top'. I thought this was such a good description and promptly decided to adopt the name as it is a much better name for the quilt. Thank you Jude.

So I guess you can gather that the quilt is done. It took me a little longer because I could not help myself and stitch up 'Lucky Summer' in between but it was worth it. This quilt includes a lot of fabric that are rather precious to me and I finally really love it after some initial hick ups.

So here it is in all its glory.

For about two years now I had in my stash this wonderful bright Philip Jacobs print 'Geranium' in duck egg which I saved for something special. I always wanted to use it as a quilt back on a quilt that would feature mostly green floral prints but when I was working on the top of 'Botanica' it became quickly clear that 'Geranium' was made for this so I decided to cut into it.

For this quilt I made big strides into two of my most favourite floral prints and whilst I was agonising over it while I was cutting, I am now really glad that I did it and the fabric looks so much better in use rather than sitting on the shelf and gathering dust.
 

I quilted in a petal pattern/orange peel pattern because I wanted to emphasis the floral feel of it. This I did with my walking  foot and not free motion and it really was very easy to do.

 

I used two different variegated Gueterman Sulky thread, the greenish one (no 4125) for the back and the greyish (no 4028) for the front.

I wanted something really bright and cheerful for the binding that complements both the front and the back and found this Kaffe Fasset Fuchsia Dot in my stash and luckily my local quilt shop Tikki had still some in stock as I would not have had enough otherwise.

The quilt measures 60 by 72 inches (1.52 x 1.82 m) and the perfect sofa size. Well, I better get on that sofa with it then.....

Greek Cross progress

Now that the weather is all wintery again (big sad smile) the sewing machine called and I got to work on my version of the Greek Cross quilt.

These blocks are so quickly assembled and are really fun to make as they have a bit of everything, a bit of HST, a few rectangles and a square.

I had the top finished quickly and my original plan was to pretty much make it like Faith did but when the top was done I was not happy, no not at all. It looked dull, absolutely dull. So I decided a border would be the solution and started auditioning various fabrics I had in my stash for a few days until I settled on a combination of two border fabric; a narrow one of purple and white dots (Kaffe Fasset dots) to brighten everything up and then a wide one of Lilac Rose.  It took all my courage to cut further into Lilac Rose but I found an online shop that still stocked a few yards of it and I quickly bought them all (big sigh...... )

Once the border(s) were attached the quilt became a whole new quilt with a totally different rather cheerful mood which is what I was after in the first place. What do you think ?

The backing fabric will be another print that I cherish and have had in my stash for a while. I bought it at Tikki Ltd almost two years ago and decided that now was the time to use it. But that I will reveal only when the quilt is done. But you are welcome to guess; it is another Kaffe Fassett print and the base colour is duck egg.

Speak to you soon !

Greek Cross

Before I jump onto sharing the first steps of my new quilt project with you, a bit of admin.

First and foremost I'd like to say a huge thank you for all your encouraging comments here and on Flickr following the finishing of 'Tuscan Hills'. It really made my day and made me feel all fuzzy around my heard. I have many more plans for quilts with a more minimalist theme but will dive first head on into some print and colour again. 

Secondly a few notes regarding comments. Although I not always re-comment on comments you leave me here on my blog I read and value each and every one of them. I will however always answer questions you may have. I tend to answer them via e-mail and now in addition also have started to reply on the blog since blogger has the nested comment functionality and because the answers usually benefit everybody.

This week somebody left me a question on my Christmas quilt regarding fabric measurements but the comment was 'no-reply-blogger'. I left the answer on the post itself but please please folks check your blogger settings as I can't get in touch with you if you have this setting selected in blogger. To change it go on the dashboard, into edit profile and tick show my e-mail address.

 

And now to the new quilt project:

Last summer the 'Summer Sampler Series' was all the rage and in fact I started to work on several blocks but haven't gotten very far yet.... I think this is now officially a UFO but it is the only one I have (phew....). Anyway one of the blocks from the series I really liked was the 'Greek Cross' and when Faith from Fresh Lemon Quilts made a quilt from just that block I really was thrown by it and immediately resolved to do just the same.


I have been hording a sizable stash of Kaffe Fassett and Philip Jacobs fabrics for quite a while and decided to use these for my version of the Greek Cross.

 
    I added some 'Innocent Crush' and Joe Dewberry to the mix and voilà, what do you think of the mix ?

I just couldn't resist to share a close up of one of my favorite Philip Jacobs print of all times; lilac rose. Isn't it lush !