Shades of Green - a finished quilt -

A finished quilt.... at last. That did take a while indeed but I am truly happy with the result. So prepare for lots and lots of pictures. My original inspiration for this quilt were Spring greens and it is kinda apt that I have finished it when we are once again moving into Spring.  For all those in London, the quilt is on show at the Village Haberdashery from tomorrow onwards for a while.




The quilt has about 30 different fabrics in various shades of green cut into simple squares and arranged on point in a uniform way. I love that it is riutuos in its colouring but still ordered and organised.




I had some pretty fabric in my stash that lend itself to fussy cutting and these little flowers create a real focal point in the quilt.



To combat all the vertical and diagonal lines I decided to quilt in a concentric circle that I so love and I think this worked out really well. Quilted circles always get me!




It has been quilted densely with barely a half inch between the lines which gives the quilt its typical texture.

I used an off-white Aurifil 40w thread for the quilting rather than a 32w given the quilt is quite densely quilted. But either would have been fine. It's just what I had a hand to be honest. Generally I prefer to quilt with a thicker thread and never quilt with a 50w for example. Though I use 50w or 60w for piecing.





The quilt is 70in x 60in and thus big enough for a good cuddle on the sofa or a double bed indeed. I prefer my bed quilts not to be the entire length of the bed but to just cover 3/4 of it.



The back fabric is a gorgeous and fun print by Riley Blake and I have the same glasses pattern in a deep yellow in stash too for another exciting quilt.



I so enjoyed playing with those greens (and the occasional pink popping up) that I am actually thinking of making 3 more seasonal quilts in this way, one in yellows for the Summer, one in deep reds for the Autumn and one in white/greys for the Winter.



Well, let's see if my enthusiasm will translate into actual quilt making or being hampered by more knitting....



The quilt will also be listed in my Etsy shops in a few days time.

Love Patchwork and Quilting issue 4

A happy New Year to you all ! I hope you all got into 2014 safe and sound and with lots of good sewing intentions.

A few days ago the fourth edition of Love Patch & Quilting flattered into my house and it features another quilt of mine and an article I wrote on solids. To say that I am pleased would be an outrageous understatement....

Do you remember my Sketch quilt ?

When I finished it quite a few of you asked for a pattern and I was willing to do it but building works interfered and when the magazine came along I suggested to write a pattern for it by making a new version of the quilt.

The new version is a reminder of seaside colours and the quilt does give me a warm feeling when looking at it.

So if you are interested in making this beauty and I promise that it is not very complicated and actually a lot of fun then go an get edition 4 of the magazine.

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.

Sketch - a work in fast progress

Could have ironed it a bit better.....

Bloggers Quilt Festival - my quilt for Enne

Well hello there. No I am not quite back and my house is still in a state of renovation but the progress is huge and I am hoping to be back at my sewing machine in a weeks time and soon thereafter with a blog post of a works in progress. God I can't tell how I miss my Janome !

Still, I swore to myself when I finished the quilt for Enne before Christmas that I would enter it to the Blogger's quilt festival. None of my quilts has ever had a more positive response and hardly a week goes by without it being tagged somewhere. So I guess it would almost be a crime not to enter it.

The funny thing is that when my sister commissioned me to make this quilt for here mother-in-law I wasn't really sure that it would would be a good one. I had my doubts throughout the entire process which proves that you can be totally wrong about something. Don't get me wrong when it was finally finished I loved it and how can you not with so much Oakshott Lyon in it but I still was utterly unprepared and overwhelmed by the response of the quilting community and that of my family.

 It took me a while to get my head around it but I finally decided that this quilt was probably one of my best ones.

And what was double wonderful was that Enne who used to sew a lot herself was really happy about it and appreciated all the work that went into it. The quilt was quilted on my trusted Janome 7700 along the lines of the patterned fabric. The Oakshott Lyon is a delicate fabric and I did not want to quilt on top of the fabric so decided I quilt around it. This produced a great effect on the overall quilt.

This quilt is based on Megan's Trajectory quilt that can be found here including a tutorial.
My original post can be found here.

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.

On-point -work in progress-

I normally don't give that many update throughout the progress of a quilt-in-making but this one is so special and so vibrant that I can't help myself photographing it all the time.

Hopefully this isn't getting to boring for you and the next post about it will be the finishing line.
Promise !!

Hometown - finally a finished quilt

I say finally because to me it seems that I have been working on this quilt forever. But in actual fact it only appears that way. It took me a month which is long for me but then again I made a few other things in between, such as my Tova and a laptop cover and I went on holiday for a week too.

Anyway the quilt is finished and I am mightily pleased with it and am fairly certain that my godmother will love it.

Just to recap, the quilt pattern is 'Botanical Gardens' from Sarah Fieldke's book 'Quilting from little things' . The blocks are set on point and use basically always two contrasting fabrics which was perfect for my stash of Hometown.

I kept the quilting simple because although this is a quilt of subtle colours it is nonetheless a busy one. So I quilted in straight lines right and left of the seam lines. Originally I had in mind to add a diagonal along the individual blocks but eventually abandoned this idea and I think that was the right decision.

The entire quilt is made of the Hometown collection. I used every last scrap of it. The quilt measures around 65 to 75" which makes it a perfect sofa quilt. The original quilt in the book was square and had a border.

The back is just a more or less random selection of leftover fabric pieced together.

As mentioned in my earlier posts I did not follow the piecing instructions from the book which suggested to piece in rows. I think this is not very wise and will lead to countless errors in my opinion. What I did is piece large sections; i.e. constructed myself "blocks" that I transferred to a piece of carton carton approximately A3 size and then sewed the pieces togheter. This worked very well and I only made one error in the whole process.

Earlier posts regarding this quilt can be found here and here.

Hometown progress

The top is finally pieced. I won't lie. It wasn't enjoyable piecing. This quilt pattern is by no means difficult, complex yes but not difficult but I found the whole experience somehow tedious although the finished top looks fantastic.

I have a nagging feeling that my not so enjoyable quilting time may not be entirely down to the quilt pattern but more down to a massive quilt hangover from sewing frantically between October and December. So I have been gentle with myself and only pieced when I really felt up to it which is why the whole top took more than two weeks (and yes my upstairs studio was not cleaned the entire time...)

And here a glimpse of the quilt back. Although I absolutely love the Hometown collection and I would have easily had enough for another quilt I am determined to use it all on this quilt. So the quilt back will be pieced from Hometown too.

Previous posts regarding this quilt can be found here

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.

A quilt for Aenne {work in progress}

I have a new quilt commission. This time it is from none other than my lovely sister. She and her husbeast would like to gift a quilt to her mother-in-law Aenne for Christmas.
Apparently Aenne used to sew a lot in her younger days and is rather impressed by my quilts (my sister has several). So no pressure there.

My head went straight into planning mode when I heard and because Aenne is a keen gardener who has a large vegetable and flower garden I was convinced that Kaffe Fassett and Philip Jacobs would feature largely in the plan.

Then my sister and Aenne trawled my webpage and it turned out that Aenne is much more taken by my modern and contemporary quilts such as the Comet or Tuscan Hills which took me by surprise. But she reasoned that her living room is already full of pattern and colour and a quilt that would be equally as exuberant would be to much. I couldn't agree more.

So the other night my sister and I (she in Germany and me here) had another look at my quilts and those in my favorite section on Flickr and Anja's eye fell on the 'Trajectory' quilt by Megan from monkey beans.This is indeed a quilt I covet and have thought to make for myself one day using my voile fabric collection on black background. My sister thought that those boomerang shapes looked like little swallows or larks flattering in the sky and I really like that notion.

So this was settled and the next step was to choose the fabric. We also spotted in my stash folder my Oakshott 'Lyon' collection that I bought in Feb 2011. At the time when I bought this gorgeous pack of fat eights I was contemplating to use them in my single girl quilt but later decided to go with just solids. I am so glad that we finally found a purpose for these amazing woven fabrics.

The plan is to combine them with a variety of natural Kona solids (such as cream, sand, putty etc.) and then to add the Oakshott fabric for the boomerangs. I'm afraid it will look rather similar to Megan's original with respect to colours but as it is a commission I am ok with it. If it was for myself I would have chosen different colours.

It will be a large lap quilt at 63" x 70 " or 1.8m x 1.6m. My calculations have resulted in 90 blocks at 7 1/2 inches! I created my paper piecing block according to Megan's excellent tutorial and already started paper piecing; 24 done only 63 to go......

Drunken Harlequin

...is the new name I have given  the formerly known 'Summertime' quilt after several people pointed out that the pattern looked a bit like a harlequin pattern. But because it is a slightly wonky harlequin I am going to call it drunken harlequin !

So here it is and what a joy it was to make, although rather a lot of work. This quilt is 60" x 60" in size and has a staggering 400 HSTs which mean a lot cutting, pressing of open seams and squaring of blocks. It kept me busy on several early mornings before work and late nights too but it was well worth it.

For the back I used a well horded print from my stash from the 'Pretty Bird' collection by Pillow and Maxfield for Michael Miller. I have used this print for a quilt backing before in the red colour way which really added vavavoom to this quilt. The blue colourway worked perfectly with this quilt and I made up the remaining space with Kona in Peapot (one of the new colours) and Michael Miller couture in Malibu.

I quilted as per usual with Gueterman Sulky in 1082 along the HST stitch lines to make the pattern also visible through the quilting lines on the quilt back.

The binding was a difficult choice and I was for a while convinced it would be orange or red but then went with oval elements in  mustard/green to compliment to back and the front rather than to contrast.

I love the little splashes of patterned fabric I added in a few rows. I think it adds a bit of interest and lets the eye rest for a while on this rather lively quilt.

Drunken Harlequin is listed in my shop and and now I am of to the next quilting adventure. Stay tuned.