A long hot Summer's day

I have a new quilt in progress, slow progress but progress nonetheless. And the best thing about the quilt is that I will be teaching it at the Village Haberdashery next week Saturday the 8th of September.




Those in the know will spot that it is a pineapple quilt pattern. This is one of those patterns that I have had long on my quitting list but resisted for a long time because most of the foundation pieced versions out there are too small and fiddly for my liking. But it's still such an attractive block to make that I decided to make my own pattern to suit my needs and those of my students of course. My version is quite big and just shy of 12 inches square (so you can still print on A3) which makes the whole process easier and more enjoyable.





This quilt is the 2nd in my seasonal quilt series that I started some two years ago with "Spring Greens" . My aim with this little series is to create four distinct quilts each inspired from a season. For me Spring is a riot of greens and Summer has always been yellow in all its glorious shades and that is what I try to show with my "A long hot Summer's day quilt. The pineapples in the quilt are all created from a variety of solid yellows whiles the patterned areas are created from every single yellow piece of fabric I have in my stash. This is by the way an ideal pattern to get rid of stash and offcuts.




If you want to to learn how to foundation piece pineapple pattern quilt blocks then join me for a Saturday worth of quilting and fun at the Village Haberdashery in West Hampstead.

Stormdoor II

I have several knits to share with you but somehow never seem to find the motivation to blog about it.  However this morning motivation finally struck and here I am. You may remember the Plucky Knitter Stormdoor shawl I knitted for my sister for her birthday in 2016.

I enjoyed knitting the pattern so much that I decided there and then to knit myself a shawl too. That I did sometime last year and I am just as smitten with the result as I was with the green beauty for my sister. 

The colour in the images is not quite representative to the true colour which is a very dark burgundy. Reds are very difficult to photograph and even with a lit of tweaking the colour channels this is the best I could do.

The yarn this time is from the Plucky Knitter and is their gorgeous cashmere/silk yarn Spiffy in a sport weight. As you can imagine it's incredibly soft and feels luxurious and sumptuous around my neck. 

The beauty with this pattern is that you can use all of your yarn, you simply knit increases until you have used half and then you start with the decreases. Works a treat. Two done and already another planned. 

Happy knitting and quitting. 

A quilt for Franka

Hello and happy New Year 2018 to everybody. I started the year with a new quilt. My friend and college's daughter hit the big first birthday yesterday and that meant that a quilt had to be created. As everybody knows a baby or toddler needs at least one quilt to cuddle up under or to play with.




So I spend the last two weekends designing, choosing fabric from my stach, assembling, sewing, quilting. And what a joy it was. As you can see my colour theme is centred around the cool tonal range, such as turquoise, blue, grey with a dash of pink thrown in now and then for good measure.



I literally tore through my entire stash to hunt for suitable fabrics and for a while it looked like a bombshell in my studio but that is all part of the fun (though the folding and ordering of said bombshell not so much).



I chose the hourglass pattern intersected with simple squares and I made sure I had a good amount of "I spy" objects to keep the little one interested and entertained.



The finished squares are all 3 1/2 inches and I started the hourglass blogs with 5 1/2  squares to ensure I had enough to square off given that anything sewn on a bias seam is prone to distortion.




I had some of these fabrics for many years now. I remember buying the flipflop fabric when my sister still lived in Bremen and I would take my nephew out in the pram and we would always pop into this  fabric store on the way to the playground. He is now 9 years old and although this is more than 6 years ago he still remembers this.




And come Cotton & Steele cats can't be missed out on the quilt together with the horses and cheeky slogans....




....and dresses and dogs and little windmills and balloons....




The quilt is bound with a teal print that echoes the colours in the quilt and gives it a nice slightly darker frame and in addition works well with the back of the quilt.



The quilt is about 42" by 49" with 84 hourglass blocks and a similar number of simple squares. I can't quite remember the number of different fabrics I used but it is in the same region.

What a great start to the year.