Isosceles triangles quilt and class

The Village Haberdashery were I am teaching quilting and other sewing classes asked me to teach a master class in isosceles triangles. So I thought the best way to go about this is to first make a class sample...that turned out to be a baby quilt (no half measures here...).




For those who have never heard about isosceles triangles (or can't remember geometry lessons at school), they have two sides of equal length rather than three and are thus a little "taller".



I worked with triangles before and whether they are isosceles or other they all require careful handling during cutting and quilt assembly which I will teach during the class including tips on fabric choice, design, quilting etc. We scheduled two classes one in July and one in September.



I loved making this quilt and new immediately when we decided to just use solids that I wanted something with lots of blues. It took only 10 min to choose all the colours for this quilt!



I used five different blues (Surf, Regatta, Riviera, Blue Jay and Candy Blue) and one orange  (Torch). All are Kona Cotton and are in stock at the Village Haberdashery.



Often when I make a quilt that is led by clear geometrical forms, I choose a quilting pattern that is the opposite of those strict uniform lines such as concentric circle. Whilst my go-to quilt pattern is the concentric circle, I chose something a little different for this quilt. I wanted to quilt in a way that looks as if many very large circles are implying that the quilt is part of a larger piece (at least from the back).



If you know my quilts then you know that I prefer coloured threads for quilting rather than white and this one is no exceptions. In fact I went even further. I quilted in two different varigated thread colours (both Gueterman Suki), one in shades of blues and one with a distinct emphasis on orange.



And I absolutely adore the result and wished I made the quilt bigger. The quilt will be displayed at the shop from next week and as part of my classes.

A new Single Girl quilt in progress

Hello there everybody. I am back from a rather wonderful holiday in the warm sun (sorry about that...) and just got right back into teaching at the Village Haberdashery yesterday and working on a customer commission.

A while back a former student of mine asked me to make here a 'Single Girl' Quilt for her little daughter. And I was so happy to have been asked because this quilt pattern is one of my all time favorites. I have made two of them over the past years (here and here) and love both dearly. Sonya, my customer, was very taken with my originals and also wanted an all solids quilt but with a fresher background colour.

We collaborated on the set of colours to be used and decided on a rainbow style colour set but without any pinks and the background colour is the wonderful grey/blue Kona slate. 

From my previous versions of the quilt I still have the plastic templates but this is still a quilt that demands patience and one where all the cutting is done using scissors rather than a rotary cutter. Still, I love the process and that is all that counts right now.

Keep you posted

Winter Carnival is here

Issue 15 of Love Patchwork & Quilting signals the start of a series of three solids only quilts made by me. The first one is a Kaleidoscope quilt for which I used the new Kona Cotton colours and plenty of older ones.

The quilt is paper pieced and suitable for beginners and is a great opportunity to use your fabric scraps.

Those new Kona Colours are wonderful and I had a lot of fun pairing them with other contrasting colours to produce a real carnival of colours.

This quilt features about 80 different colours of which most are bright and a few more sedate that make the riotous ones pop out even more.
 

I quilted in my customary continuous circle quilting technique that I have sewn a lot again lately. It really is a never ending love affaire.

Next week I will show you a few more quilts from other designers (I don't have a copy of the mag yet as I managed to let my own subscription run out....great, isn't it)

Kona Cotton giveaway

So here it is as as announced earlier in the week. Robert Kaufman and I are giving away one fat quarter set of the 33 new Kona Cotton colours to one lucky winner.

To participate in the giveaway you simply need to tell me if you have ever made a solids only quilt and/or will consider it in the future.

Further rules are the usual ones:

• no restriction on participants
• need to include the answer to above question in the comment
• I will absolutely not chase potential winners, so you must have an e-mail address attached to your profile (no response bloggers comments will be disregarded)
• giveaway ends on bankholiday Monday the 25th
• winner announced the day after

Enjoy and thank you very much for participating !

In support of Solids

I have teamed up with Robert Kaufmann' Kona Cotton and Love Patwork & Quilting to make a series of solids only quilts for the magazine. The first quilt that is truly a riot of colour and I promise you, should not be missed is made using all the new Kona colours plus many, many of the existing colours. It will feature in the November or December edition. So why am I telling you this ? Well, because Robert Kaufmann generously sent me two fat quarters bundles of the 33 new colours which means I can give one away. That I will do later in the week and I hope you stop by and participate.
But first I hope you enjoy a little trip down the solids only memory lane with me.

Over the past years I have not only appreciated solids but have worked often with just solids and now almost find myself preferring them to patterned fabric (there I said it).

And one of my all time favourite quilts is still the 'Single Girl' quilt made with Kona and Klona cottons. Having it on my sofa or bed or simply looking at it fills me with enormous pleasure and satisfaction and I am sure this will never change.

 

And I think the second favourite is my Comet quilt featuring Oakshott Cottons that really pack a punch.

Front

Back

But it wasn't always high impact colours that I went for. 'Tuscan Hils' uses masses of negative space in a very subtle way and incidentally was my first quilt on which I tried circular quilting and that has now become something of a trademark on my quilts.

I also used circular quilting with 'She loves the Blues' , a quilt commissioned by my brother for his girl friend. I really love this quilt with its floating squares.

A wall painting in a London restaurant served as inspiration to make the Sketch quilts. Sketch I was sewn from all my solids scraps and Sketch II with Michael Miller Cotton Couture and both make me smile a lot. Sketch II was also the first quilt that I made for LP&Q.

 

Sketch I

Sketch II

I must have been drunk to want to make 400 or so HSTs for 'Drunken Harlequin' but I was glad I did in the end. This quilt also uses the incredibly soft Michael Miller Cotton Couture solids.

And my latest edition to the ever growing solids series is the Gee's Bend inspired quilt 'Dreams of Summer' which was constructed without rotary cutter or ruler and felt quite liberating to make.

There is growing number of quilters such as Alissa Haight Carlton that now use solids as the main feature in their quilts and not just as a background colour. Solids only quilts have a distinct modern feel to it that is often combined with a graphic design element. I find it easy to use solids but know other quilters find it rather difficult due to their intensity. So I hope the giveaway that will be on my blog later in the week will inspire another quilter to become a convert for solids only quilts!

Single boy quilt - finished-

I am not sure when and why I started to call this quilt 'Single Boy Quilt' - it just sort of happened. Maybe because it is the smaller brother to the large 'Single Girl Quilt'....although that doesn't make much sense at all....anyway it is finished and another one I very much love.

I spend rather a few hours quilting this beauty with quilting lines barely a half inch apart. I wanted to make the continuous circle more organic and tried to vary the distance between the quilting lines but somehow most seem to be the same distance apart.

And I adore the quilt back! I used up all my Klona solids I had for this quilt and because I didn't have quite enough I added a strip of patterned fabric which is 'Long Live Vintage' by Carolee McMullin for Adornit to make up for the shortage. And you know what ? The colors in the strip just fit perfectly to the rest. What a stroke of luck. I do love a quilt that is truly reversible and I think this one just fits the bill.

The quilt is 46" square and bound with a stripy number in a yellow/orange which might be from Sevenberry but I am not sure.

I quilted in Güterman Sulky 30 w and used a variegated thread for the top in colour 4036 which is a beige/brown tone and for the back an ice grey from Aurifil also in 30w in colour 2600. I do prefer a 30 w to the lighter weights for quilting as it brings out the quilting more distinct.

The bright solids in this quilt are Klona and are available here in the UK at Backstitch. The background colour is Kona in taupe which is widely available in the UK and amongst other at Village Haberdashery.

Previous posts regarding this quilt and its bigger sister can be found here and here.

The quilt is available at my Etsy Shop for purchase. 

Single boy quilt - continuous circular quilting - a quick tutorial

I finished piecing my 'Single boy' quilt the other day and basted it in preparation for some intensive circular quilting.

The way I do circular quilting is as follows:

• Take a round object about 3" in diameter and draw with tailor's chalk a circle around it at the point where you wish to start quilting (this does not have to be the middle of the quilt, see here and here for off-center examples)
• Then draw from anywhere on the circle a quarter circle toward the center
• Then draw another quarter circle towards the outside. This acts as your guide for the continuation. You now have instead of a circle a spiral and that is exactly what a continues circle is

• Start sewing at the point where you drew the quarter circle towards the inside  (see red arrow) and NOT at the start of the drawn circle. This smaller piece is difficult to sew with the machine and inevitably always ends up looking somewhat square as you have to stop and readjust your quilt every tow stitches or so. To avoid this I simply stitch this little tale by hand. And I do this separately for the top and bottom as decorative stitch that only catches two layers rather than quilting through the three layers. This way it almost looks machine stitched. I make sure I have enough length of thread when I start machine quilting to finish the tale by hand after I have ran out of bobbin thread the first time (because that is the first time you can actually take the quilt of the machine)

• From the start of your machine quilting process ensure you frequently adjust your quilt so you are actually going around smoothly. It helps if you keep your needle in the down position so the quilt doesn't move. Don't force the quilt around, instead sew 10 stiches or so, stop, adjust quilt, sew again 10 stitches and so forth. This will go on like this for a few rounds and soon you realize that you can stitch longer without having to adjust the quilt quite as often as the circle has grown larger. 
• At the point where the chalk circle has finished (the outer tale so to say) use either the edges of your walking foot as a guide or the guide tool that comes usually with it. It depends on how far apart you want your circle stitch lines. For this quilt I am choosing the edges of my walking foot as I want dense quilting.

• The first 10 rounds of circular quilting are still awkward even if you do the tale by hand. I generally don't worry about this. None oft the circular quilting I have done is 100 % circular at first. There are always a few jagged lines. This is after all a handmade object and not quilted by a programmed machine. 
• Circular quilting requires a VERY well basted quilt as the constant movement through the machine puts a lot of strain on the quilt.

Alternative start:

• You can also start the quilting by using a darning foot or free motion foot if you don't wish to do the hand stitching. But I only recommend this for quilters who are actually familiar with free-motion quilting as this will otherwise go horribly wrong. Once you have done the first few rounds you an switch to the straight stitch walking foot. 

Sketch - a finished quilt

I worked like a woman possessed on this quilt and finished it over the weekend. And what can I say. This was one of the most enjoyable piecing and quilting sessions I have had in a long time and I am just totally enamoured with the finished quilt.

It started of with just a photo of a spectacular wall decoration at a restaurant and ended with a quilt that resides now on my sofa and that keeps making me break out in a wild grin whenever I my eyes fall on it.

'Sketch' is such a riot of colour and perfect for this less than ideal summer. It measures around the 60" inch mark square.

I debated long about what to do for the back and finally settled on 'Uopia' from Free Spirit that I have had in my stash a long time waiting for something special. The colour fits perfectly with the turquoise and deep purple in the flowers as both are mirrored somewhere on the front.

The quilting is rather predictably crosshatch along the coloured strips but I quilted into the white squares as I wanted generous quilting and also just because I fancied it.

The white squares are 'Kona Snow' and the coloured strips are totally randomly chosen from my solids scrap bin.

The obvious choice for the binding would have been a scrappy one but I didn't much fancied the obvious so went for a stripy number in black and white which I think is the icing of the cake so to say.

And I am already on to the next quilt. Clearly the enforced break did do much good for the creative juices.
I hope your creative juices are flowing too.

Stash Note 77

The other day a wonderful little package curtsey of Annie at the Village Haberdashery arrived at Needles and Lemons Headquarters.

This is the aqua colourway of Tula Pink's new line 'Salt Water'.

I love everything about this line; the subtle blues, greens and greys and the wonderful pattern too. Generous as Annie is she added two matching Kona cottons; aqua and nightfall.
 

We have a special project planed for this but I can't reveal it just jet.

Enjoy your Sunday and happy sewing.

She loves the Blues - a finished quilt

...and the last finished quilt of the year. Most definitely; no I will not do another one for this year. But maybe start one ? I dunno....perhaps my sister is right when she asked yesterday if I was already on cold turkey.

Sunday morning I finished the last stitches on this commissioned quilt. The brief for this quilt was to use blues but other than that I had free reign on the design and that is what I love best at times.

I came up with the design on my way home from dinner at my brothers. Him and his girlfriend have similar colors in their living room and from a design point of view I wanted to do something very modern, uncluttered, yet striking.  Inspiration also came from this quilt, Katie 'from the blue chair' made a few months ago.

I didn't use a pattern but drew a rough design on a piece of paper, then laid out a bed sheet on the floor that I folded to the same size as the finished quilt was supposed to be (1.8 x 1.6 m/ 70" x 63") and started to sew and arrange log cabin blocks until I had a composition I was happy with.

I then filled in the space between the blocks for which I used mostly strips of 2 1/2" width until I had a rectangular around the log cabin blocks. The final but most difficult part was to add solids until I had the desired quilt size. Difficult was that I ended up sewing large solid pieces on the bias and we all know what can happen with that. Let's say it took me a while to get this one square and a lot of measuring and resizing was involved.

My original quilting plan was to go in diagonal straight lines but eventually I abandoned it in favor of circular quilting to give it that wonderful extra dimension. I fear that this way of quilting is fast becoming my signature style because I come back to it time and time again. Many of you commented on the first post that the colour reminded you of the seaside and beach. Somehow that hadn't crossed my mind but after reading the comments I thought I might as well add a little bit of actual seaside to the back. The sea star prints are from the 'Going Coastal' collection from crazy old Ladies that I still had in my stash. I also added a few strips of blue/white gingham from a very old bed sheet that I salvaged from my sister a while ago. The remainder are solids that I used on the front (see first post more colour details)

 

I kept the binding simple as I wanted to give a feeling of infinity when looking at the front of the quilt. The background fabric including the binding is Kona Putty which I absolutley love as it has a very soft cream undertone somewhere in the middle between off-white and proper cream. Very subtle and beautiful.

Do I love this quilt ? Oh yes I do very much and it is most definitely in the list of favorites of the year. I will be a little sad to see it go but I guess I can always invite myself to another dinner at my brothers' and check-up on "my"quilt.

She loves the Blues

A new week, a new quilt. But this is probably the last quilt I will finish for 2012. I am starting to feel a bit quilted out to be honest.

My dear brother sent me a mail a few weeks ago asking if I could make a quilt for his girlfriend. She likes Blues and he would trust in my design skills (basically saying I haven't got a glue - bless him).
Luckily they had invited me for dinner the night before and when I left there sumptuously fed and and watered, a design idea had formed in my brain even before Johannes asked me to make a quilt.
Annette has a store bought blanket on her sofa with blues and beige and I thought I could do something with this arrangement.

Antique Blue curtsey of Design Seeds

I decided to make a quilt just of solids and the first stop if you decide this is Design Seeds. I just would not do without this fantastic website. And sure enough it was not long until I found my perfect combination.

So I started to take out my color charts of the various solids producing companies and found to my surprise that all are lacking a decent selection of Blues. You can have masses of turquoise in every shape or form but not the Blues ! Still I ordered the above stack from Annie at the Village Haberdashery (top to toe: Kona Sky, Surfe, Alegria, Navy, Stone and Putty) and added some more from my stash such as Kona Windsor, Royal and Mustard)

And then I started stitching a few log cabin blocks ! Let's see where that is going to take me this week.