A shirred summer dress

Hello everybody! I hope you have had a good Summer with a lot of sun and fun. I certainly did and although my intention was to sew very little, I actually ended up creating a bit of a Summer wardrobe at the beginning of July and thought I share this with you now even though Summer is drawing to a close.

I made three items and will post about these over the coming weeks.

In June 2013 I bought this set of Anna-Maria Horner 'Field Study' when I was holidaying in New York.

These are gorgeous cotton/linen blends that lend themselves ideally to dresses, tops and skirts. All I knew when I bought it was to make a 'Study Hall skirt' but I had no definite plans for the rest. So inspiration struck at last and I had used up this fabric in no time.

I love shirred summer dresses, they are flattering and easy to wear and if you are not too busty, you get away wearing them without a bra. They are my go-to summer dresses for at home and when I holiday in the Caribbean in the winter. The one dress I have been wearing for the past 5 years or so is finally losing shape. It was store bought and was great but the shirring is slackening and overall it's a bit tired now.

So I took out the wonderfully named 'Parenthetical in Deep' from my stash and set out making a new summer dress.

I used this tutorial for the dress which is fantastic. Shirred dresses are basically two big rectangular pieces stitched together with some straps. Shape comes through the shirring and this dress came together in less than 2 hours.

I love the way the pattern is squished together through the shirring and so much liked it that I made also a shirred top but more of that in another post.

A bunch of Knick-Knack Knickers

Ever since I saw the free Bloomers pattern by Anna-Maria Horner I have been dying to make a couple of these but in the absence of a small baby in my family or friends circles I had to bide my time.

And you bet with the arrival of my niece nothing could stop me from making a few of those. They are soooooo easy to make and it takes barley 30 min to make one.

And I promise these aren't the last I made either.....

Field Study Churn Dash - a finished single quilt

A few days ago I finished this quilt and it is already on its way to my customer in Germany.  This was fun and I love how the quilt came together. There were a few design considerations because initially I thought to use the text fabric for the inside of the blocks until I realized that it would have made the quilt way to busy.

This is a single quilt (2m x 1m) which is an usual size for me and not that easy to photograph as I don't have walls around me that are over two 2 meter high and on which I could hang the quilt.

I quilted in double lines along the seams of each square to achieve a nice cross hatch. I think this quilt would have benefited also from in-the-ditch quilting as the front is fairly busy and it would have achieved a single crosshatch on the back too.

The back is 'Pretty Bird' in spice from the  'Pretty Bird by Pillow and Maxfield Spice Group' collection for Michael Miller (here). I don't think this print is available anymore. I used it once before as a quilt back and love how striking it is.

The churn dash blocks were arrange so that a darker and a lighter block are placed consecutively and from each fabric combination I made four blocks but with interchanging fill of the half square triangles and rectangles. This stops the quilt from being to riotous in its colour combinations.

This is such a great block and I love that the half square triangles give it a spiky look. This should make for a great quilt class too in the new year.

Field Study churn dash - a work in progress

All pieced together and waiting to be basted.
Love it.

Happy stitching !

Field Study quilt - a new project

I have long been wanting to make a quilt with the traditional churn dash block. I had the pleasure to sew the block once or twice before when I was in the Brit Bee but never in a larger project. It is such an effective quilt block and makes me rather happy every time I see one.

This new project serves two purposes. It is actually a quilt commissioned by a client in Germany and  it will also be the preparation for a new class at the Village Haberdashery that I intend to teach in January or February (date not set yet). It will be a class that spans over 6 weeks or so where we will design a churn dash quilt together, learn about quilt math, half square triangles, rectangles, how to layout blocks and sew the top together and finally quilt and bind. It should be great fun and is a class designed for everybody who already dipped their toes into quilting and who wants more !

I chose Anna-Maria Horner's Field Study for this project that I purchased back in September 2012. This is a really beautiful collection full of life and the patterns and colours are stunning. It is bright yet coherent and a little adventurous with the animal prints in between.

As background fabric I decided to choose a warm print rather than a harsh white and went for the text print of the Crabtastic collection  by the designer Maude Asbury for Blend fabric ( I did a project for Annie a while back with this collection, see here). It adds a modern touch to the traditional block.

The blocks are all 9" finished size and the quilt will be a single which is a size I actually haven't done before.

Happy sewing.

Stash Note 81

Gosh has it really  be that long that I shared some new fabric with you ! Well although I did not have the opportunity to sew during much of the renovation in my house I did have opportunity to purchase fabric ! And in fact I had that opportunity in New York. I had the most wonderful 5 days in early May there with my sister. Proper sister time that we much enjoyed. We shopped, sat in cafes, went to restaurants and galleries and cycled almost the entire length of Manhattan. Before I flew out I purchased fabric at some of the online stores and had it all sent to the hotel. That way I saved quite a bit on postage and of course the nasty tax.

So without further ado. My I introduce Field Study in Linen by Anna-Maria Horner that I bought at Fabricworm.

In the top image from left to right we have Flower Circuit in Guava, Ghost Wing in Aqua, the most sumptuous and wonderfully named 'Parenthetical in Deep' and last the 'Domestic Cat in Aqua' - isn't that one a riot !

For some of these I had  planned to make the Study Hall Skirt which is also by Anna-Maria Horner.  I have had the pattern for ages but so far haven't found the energy to make a skirt although I absolutely love the pattern.
But I am not so sure now as they would also make a gorgeous quilt back and I have just the quilt top lying around here that is clamoring for something glamorous.

Have a lovely Sunday

Stash Note 66

This past week was a busy one. After I recovered from the craft fair which took until Tuesday (went to bed Monday night after work at 8 pm !) I had rather a lot to do at work and there was little time to craft never mind re-photographing my unsold makes from the fair I want to put in the shop.I will do it in the next week in case you were wondering.

But today is time to quilt and more over time for a little stash note. This is all about Anna-Maria Horner's new collection 'Field' Study'. Now I have a somewhat difficult relationship with AMH collections. When I started quilting I bought the then new 'Innocent Crush' and was really disappointed when it arrived. Trouble was I bought a half yard set and felt that it was forever in my stash. Still I made a wonderful quilt from selected prints of the collection that I really love but there were a lot of prints that were not my cup of tea. 

When Loulouthi came out, I stayed well away from the quilting cotton although I really like the collection. In the end I did buy several of the voile prints and really loved those.

Then Field Study came out a few weeks ago and I was really taken by it and took advantage of the liquidation sale at Whipstitch to order a fat quarter set. And I am pleased to say that I really, really love this collection. It has lots of interesting prints, fresh bright colors and is to me a very coherent collection.

The collection comes in three  colour ways of which I have the Moonlit and Patina pallette. I particular love the latter as it has wonderful bright greens.

Patina

Moonlit

And my favorite print is Raindrops Poppies in Candy. Isn't that just the best name for this great print ? 

The entire collection is available in the UK from the lovely Annie at Village Haberdashery

Foks and Friends - a finished quilt

It took considerably less effort to finish this quilt than what the Olympic athletes had to come up with over the past two weeks. All it took was some time that I managed to find over the past weekend.

I don't want to uh and ah again about voile as I am sure it will bore you to tears by now but it really was such a pleasure again to work with this fabric despite the banana curve issue earlier when combining it with tana lawn. The softness is just out of this world. Jude and a few others suggested to actually start piecing strips from the middle which is not something I thought about and will definitely try when I make another effort combining these materials.

For now 'Folks and Friends' is finished and is every bit as gorgeous as I hoped it would be.

I quilted mostly in straight lines but added a Serpentine stitch here and there. Unfortunately the Janome Horizon doesn't have a nice programmed Serpentine stitch but I programmed one myself with the help of a splendidly written guide that can be found here (will also write a separate post about this in the next days).

The back is a vintage flower print from Liberty's of London that I bought as a remnant  piece at Shaukat last year.

For the binding I used Anna-Maria Horner's pastry print in toast (also voile) and was delighted to see that the colour matched perfectly with the back fabric.

The quilt measures 51" x 65" and is the perfect sofa-cuddle-size. It was quilted with Gueterman Sulky in silver/grey (no 1328) which blends wonderfully with this colour mix.

Folks and Friends can be purchase in my on-line ship here.

Folks and friends and banana curves

Voile. I. Love. you.

Really there isn't much more to say to this. I made my deep blue sea quilt last year from my ever growing stash of voile and and loved it to bits. And every time I open my voile/tana lawn box and feel the fabric I simply don't want to sew with anything else anymore. The softness of the voile is out of this world and tops most silks in my humble opinion. But of course that isn't realistic so I just allow myself every now and then a trip into voile land which is a bit like a guilty pleasure.

So I dived head first into the joyous land of voile and stitched together another strip quilt (sorry if you are getting bored of them). This time I wanted to mix it up by including some Liberty tana tawn print and solid but that went disastrously wrong.

When sewing a strip quilt top you need to hold on to the strips while sewing quite tightly, meaning when you are sewing together two strips you should hold the strips between your fingers to ensure they are fed evenly thought the machine while at the same time pulling slightly to the left so you are not creating a banana shaped curve. I am normally fairly aware of this having done two strip quilt before but with this one nothing worked. I had the worst banana shaped top you can imagine and my seam ripper had a whale of a time......

I wasn't quite sure what happened so started all over again but this time checked every couple of strips and found I only had the problem when I paired voile with tana lawn and no matter how well I held on to the strips while sewing the end result was still a curve rather than a straight line.

So in the end I binned all the tana lawn strips and stuck to just voile which worked a treat.

The prints used in this quilt top are a mixture of 'Little Folks', 'Innocent Crush', 'Loulouthi' and 'Prince Charming' which is why I am calling it 'Folks and Friends'

With all the Olympic watching going on there is little time to sew over the weekend but hopefully a few hours quilting will fit in somewhere. I fear my eyes are taking on a TV sized square shape soon.

What a great day team GB had yesterday and finally my home country Germany is picking up some medals too.

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 !

Stash Note 39

Flannels !

I love the the incredible soft feel of flannels but I have not used them as quilt backs yet. For some reason I find a quilt back to precious for flannel. And I think that I am entirely wrong here as flannels are actually more expensive than for example Kona cotton. So it should actually be the other way around that flannels are to precious to use as a quilt back (rambling here think....)

Anyway lately I have been making baby blankets with flannel backs. I used a whole stack for solid coloured flannels I bought when I was in the US in Spring. So I am again on the lookout for flannels and I was immediately attracted by the colours of these when they came out a few months ago. The flannels in these images are from Anna-Maria-Horner's 'Lou Lou Thi' collection, Sarah Jane's 'Children at Play' and one is also by Anna-Maria Horner but from her 'Folksy' collection'.

What I love in particular about the 'Children at play pints is that they are actually really good for boy baby blankets. So often I find that fabrics lean more toward little girls and it is often hard to find boy friendly prints.

From left to right:
AMH - Lou Lou Thi, In the Clearing
SJ - Children at Play, Rockets Blue
SJ - Children at Play, On the Go Coral

From left to right:
AMH - Lou Lou This, Jewlry Ruby
AMH - Folks, Diamond Mine Sun
AMH - Lou Lou Thi, Flower Go Around Maiden
SJ - Children at Play, Chasing airplanes blue

One buttery soft quilt is finished

My latest quilt is finished.

I started it right after I finished the 'Very Berry' quilt as I was longing for something light to glide through my fingers after the mountains of fabric I had handled for some time. 'Deep Blue Sea' (I think this name is a bit more suitable than notions of butter) is entirely made of cotton voile which has the most incredibly soft feel to it.
The design was led by the colours I had in my stash. I wanted to stay in the turquoise/ blue range of the wonderful lines of Anna Maria Horner's 'Lou Lou Thi' and Tula Pink's 'Prince Charming'. I also added a bit of  the 'Little Folks' line from Anna Maria Horner.

I cut strips of about 38 inches in different width for this quilt and simply build up until I reached a pleasant layout. In the end the length came to about 46 inches. 

The back of the quilt is kept somewhat indulgently in Anna Maria Horner's 'Clipping Forest' also from the 'Lou Lou Thi' range.

The binding is from Tula Pink's 'Prince Charming' quilt.

I machine quilted straight lines in Guerterman Sulky 30 in colour 1328 which is silvery grey, almost ice grey actually and very shiny. This colours has fast become one of my favourite quilting colours as it works well with almost anything. I also added a few hand quilted lines in various colours with Perle thread no 8 which adds a lovely contrast.

The softness of cotton voile makes it a little bit tricky to sew and baste as it tends to slip and slide easily. The  strips were nonetheless easy to sew together but it would be a bit more tricky if I had chosen smaller pieces are a more complex design. Basting this quilt was also a little bit challenging as the voile did not stick to any tape I had in the house. Again the small size was advantageous and I managed to get the back smooth in the end but I can see that one would be better of basting with two people if the quilt was bigger.

I literally can't stop myself stroking this quilt and I am sure there will be many more coming in this range.

The quilt can be found in my Etsy Shop for purchase. Sold

 

Buttery Soft I

I have finished the Very Berry Quilt. Photos and a detailed report will be posted later in the week.
But I can already say now that it has turned out beautifully but I must admit it was a struggle.

So after having wrestled 18 square meter of fabric for what seems for ever I have an unbelievable urge for lightness and simplicity and I don't see that lessening any time soon. I am putting some of the other WIP (here and here)  on hold for a bit and will produce a series of small, light quilts.

After I finished 'Very Berry' last Saturday I moved straight onto my stash of cotton voile. Oh I love fingering this fabric. It is so buttery soft and flows through your hands like silk or water. I am not sure why I have put off to make a quilt from this fabric for so long but on Sunday it seemed the perfect time for it. So I quickly whipped up this quilt top here.

 

The voile fabric I used is mainly from new lines of Anna Maria Horner's 'Lou Lou Thi', Tula Pink's 'Prince Charming' and I added a bit of the wonderful 'Little Folks' line also from Anna Maria Horner.

I am keeping this quilt in the colour range of dark blues and turquoise with a dash of orange/red and lemony yellow for contrast.

Stash Note 17

An overdue stash note is to come but first a little bit of housekeeping. First of all I would like to thank all of you for your inspiring suggestions for my new commission. They were really helpful and I have already set in motion to add a bit of texture to the selection of red with some shott cottons from Oakshott. I am also grateful for your comments regarding my 'Laugh and Happiness' quilt that is intended for my mother. In a couple of weeks time I will travel home and will find out if she likes it (if I have quilted it by then.......). So I keep you all posted.


But now to the all important stash note. What I would like to share with you is the arrival of some rather sumptuous voile. I ordered the entire Prince Charming collection by Tula Pink (8 prints) and all the Loulouthi prints by Anna-Maria Horner I could get my hands on from Fabricworm (4 out of 6). Two prints are out of stock and will be back mid months, unfortunately the most spectacular prints of the collection. You may wonder why I ordered voile instead of the quilt weight collections. To be honest I am not so sure but when I order the last Anna-Maria Horner Collection 'Innocent Crush' I was a little disappointed because I think it isn't a very coherent collection in terms of colour. I used it in my 'Cranberry Crush quilt' and am very happy with the result but if I had to order it again I would not. So I was a bit apprehensive when the new collection came out last week. Though I have to say it is growing on me steadily the more often I see it and I probably will order it anyway. But I thought rather than jumping on the bandwagon without thinking (yes I am guilt of that all to often) I check out the voiles  instead. And when I went onto the Fabricworm voile section I was struck by how well the Prince Charming voile compliments the Loulouthi set so I ordered these too. I might wait for the two missing prints before making a quilt but I might add some of the other voile I have .... I am rather impatient to cut into this goodness but on the other hand need to finish a few other bits and bobs first.
Happy sewing weekend everybody.

One Cranberry Crush - done !

Last weekend I finished the Cranberry Crush quilt I started towards the end of last year. Am I happy with it ? You bet. Everything about it delights my eyes. If you have followed my previous posts about it's progress (here, here and here) you will know that I used Anna-Maria Horner's Innocent Crush Range for this quilt and for the solid colourshott from Oakshott fabrics.

Fabric: Innocent Crush from Anna-Maria Horner
Wadding: Quilter's Dream
Quilting: Machine quilt
Quilting thread: Gueterman Sulky 30 in cranberry (1169)
Size: 74 x 74 inches (just under 1.90 m square)

As you can see from the photos the front is a zickzack pattern and the back a 9-patch combination. So basically nothing more than half square triangles and squares. Though one does have to put in some effort to get the zickzack pattern on point. I find that the best method is to cut squares and to sew on both side of the diagonal before cutting the square into two triangles. This ensures minimal stretch of the biased cut fabric.

Cranberry Crush is the first quilt I entirely machine quilted and whilst I will write a thorough review about my first 2 months experience with the Janome Horzion next week, I'd like to say that it has been a blast. I would never have imagined that machine quilting is so easy and that much fun. I always thought it to be hugely difficult. But I really had no problems at all, flatness issues, nothing. I quilted along the zickzack lines about 1.2 inches apart across the entire quilt.

Front (or back ?)

This is also the first time I used colourshott from Oakshott fabrics. The solid is easy to use a little thinner than Kona cotton for example but it is much richer in colour and has a wonderful sheen to it. The entire colour pallet is sumptuous and I am planning to use it a lot more in the future.
The cranberry solid gives the quilt  a really deep and lush feel to it.

Back (or front ?)

Lovely crinkly after it has been washed

 

Binding

 I used the 'Bubble Burst in Rich' for binding as its dark colour adds richness to the mood of the quilt and frames it well.

Storage