Negative Space - in abundance

 Love Patchwork & Quilting issue 18 is available.

 And with that my third quilt in the all-solids trilogy.

Unlike the previously two (here and here)  this quilt uses a more sedate colour pallet and lots and lots of negative space that I was deliriously happy to quilt.

The purple stripes reflect a basket weave pattern where they intersect.

Although it may look complicated, it is actually a very easy quilt to piece and because of the large amount gives you much space to quilt to your heart's content.

I quilted with about 5 different thread colours ranging from off-white to many shades of purple including a variegated thread and the result is a wonderful diverse yet supple quilting pattern.

Read all about the pattern and the quilting technique in the new magazine. The fabric for this quilt was sponsored by the lovely Tina from Tikki Patchwork in Kew.

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!

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.

Visiting an old friend of mine

Remember this quilt ?  I finished my Single girl quilt in April 2011 but whilst doing it had decided that I wasn't going for a king sized one and kept some of the pieces aside for a smaller baby sized quilt.

So the other day I got the urge to revisit the single girl pattern by Denyse Schmidt and started stitching. I so love this pattern and the quilt I originally made is a much loved sofa companion of mine. The solids I am using in this quilt are Klona and were in fact the first fabric giveaway I had ever won ! Klona (not Kona) is available here in the UK at Backstitch. They have a wonderful array of colours and whilst the fabric is at first a little tougher to the touch than Kona it becomes after a few washes very soft and smooth.

Happy weekend stitching is coming up.

Sketch - a work in fast progress

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

Sketch - inspiration struck

I got an e-mail the other day from a restaurant in London called 'Sketch'. They were advertising their Sunday offers. I have been to Sketch a couple of times over the years but have not seen all their dining rooms and as I had no intention of going there anytime soon, only halfheartedly scanned through the mail. And then it happened; inspiration struck like a flash of lightening when I got stuck on an accompanying photo of one of their dining rooms.

Photo credit 'Sketch' restaurant in London

Do you see why ? It's obvious isn't it ?

So I dove straight into my solids scrap bag which I had been eying beadily since I unearthed it from the loft anyway and pulled out every single strip I could find in their. I was like a woman possessed and a few hours later I had easily 5 meters worth of strips sewn together.

Then I went on to cutting white squares, luckily I had a 2 meter piece of almost white solid in my stash...phew...it was last Sunday afternoon too....so no shop would have been open to get me any white solid.

And I am still sewing.....

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......

Stash Note 56

Today's stash note is a lovely bunch of solids in the 'Quilt Con' colours from Michael Miller who recently have also started to produce solids like Free Spirit, Moda and Robert Kaufmann. Their collection is called 'Cotton Couture'.

I love solids and have a sizable stash of them. I think my favorite pure solids (i.e. not shot cottons) are those from Free Spirit as they have a wonderful sheen and a very soft and luxurious textures. And normally I would say this is followed closely by Kona solids but they might be pushed into third place now by 'Cotton Couture' as they too have a fantastic texture and are very light. Of course the biggest selection of colours is provided by Kona so they will always rank pretty high with me and will most often be the first choice simply because of their wider availability.

 

These were bought at FatQuater shop.

Lotta fly away - spreading its wings

... only its gonna stay put because I keep it !

So here it is; all done and actually already in use on my bed. Just to recap briefly,  this quilt is made of the new line 'Echo' by Lotta Jansdotter in combination with Kona Snow and various other Kona solids (see details in this post here). 'Echo'  was bought at Seamstar here in the UK and the Kona solids are from Riverfabrics here in the UK and from existing stash I had.

The quilt measures 70 x 76 inches (1.78 x 1.92 m) and the front is made of 136 flying gees units ( 7 x 3.5 inches) from Kona snow and patterned fabric plus a border of units in coordinating solids that are 5 x 2.5 inches).
I used two different methods to make the flying geese units and both work well. I made the larger units with my flying geese ruler. With this method there is no need to cut off dog ears at the corners but it can waste fabric. However one can minimize this by doing some calculations before measuring the fabrics strips. For the border units I used the "No Waste method for making flying geese units" by patchpieces. This is an excellent method that wastes absolutely no fabric (as title says....), the unit dimensions are easy to calculate for any size you wish but you end up with dog ears.
The reason why I used two methods was just because I wanted to try them and see how they compare. I think I am slightly in favour of the no waste method as I hate having to many fabric offcuts.

The back is pieced using the same solids that were used for the border on the front plus 'Echo' leftovers and a generous amount of Kona Coal for background.

 

I quilted in zickzack lines below and above the stitch lines to emphasis the flying gees pattern. I used two different Guetermann Sulky colours. On the front my 1071 and on the back my favourite steel grey colour 1328.

  

As always I am particularly excited about my choice of binding .It is a stripy number in rich pink and orange from the Taza collection of Dena Design bought at my local quilt shop Tiki.

 

And for good measure a few roll-ups...

 

 

Lotta fly away - an update

I have had a very productive weekend and made great progress on my 'Lotta fly away' and the 'Countdown-to-x-mas' quilt. But first an update on Lotta and a big, big thank to all you lovely readers for your encouraging comments here on my blog and on Flickr. From the comments I gather there is a lot of love for the 'Echo' collection but also a lot of headache or hesitation when it comes to finding the right pattern.

It's true, it isn't an easy collection to choose a pattern for and I'm afraid I can't tell you why I chose the flying geese pattern other then when I saw the collection the first time, my first thought was Love and my second flying geese. The collection has a good mixture of bold and finer prints and I think this actually does make it suitable for a variety of patterns but I would say the collection benefits from patterns that showcase (at least i part) larger pieces of fabric. Another pattern that comes to mind for this collection are Diamonds, just rows and rows of Diamonds.

I pieced the entire top and am now turning my thoughts to the back. I added a border of flying geese to the top which is made of solids that reflects most of the colours used in the collection.
The fabric in this image is largely from my stock. From top to bottom, the fabrics are Kona Curry, Kona Navy, Freespirit Gold (though I am not a 100 % sure) , Kona Everglade and Kona Candy Pink.

The fabric in next image was purchased from Riverfabrics and shows Kona Black (not used in this quilt though), Kona Snow and Kona Coal. Apart from the Freespirit and Kona Curry all of the above are also available from Janette at Riverfabrics in case you are looking for coordinating solids for this collection.

I got a new quilt, I got a new quilt.....

Here it is my new quilt gifted to me by Reene from Nellies's Niceties.

And I couldn't me more happy about it. The posti arrived on Saturday morning at my doorstep and 5 min later I sent Reene a big thank you mail as I was and am so happy with my 'Colour Maze' quilt. It is obvious that Renee put in a lot of thought and research around my likes and dislikes and this has paid off a 100 %. The quilt has solids, bags of colour and straight line quilting, in short everything I love. And to top it she made me a little pincusion in a fantstic long shape that is so much more practical than the ones I usually make.

Great job Reene and thank you again.
I also would like to take the opportunity to thank the BRIT SWAP organisers, individual Mamas and of course the UeberMama. These things can be hit and miss but you Ladies ensured that participants had every opportunity to make a quilt for their secret partner that works and is loved. You made us do a mosaic with our favourite handmade things and fill us in a form with more information. That was really well organised.

Thank you.
P.S. What about a fancy zipper pouch swap next ?  I volunteer to help organising it.

Quilt Along News

No,  I am not starting my own but am thinking to do this at some point as they are so much fun but at the moment there is a positive avalanche of QALs out there and a handy list can be found here.

So far I have joined into the Single Girl QAL and Lynn's Dresden Plate QAL and both were enourmous fun. The best thing about them really is the support and inspiration one gives and receives from each other.

At the moment I am without QAL so to say and feel a little cold turkey coming on. So I have been carefully looking around blockland for the right one to do. Now of course everybody knows by now about the Farmers Wife QAL and I won't go into detail about it. The only thing I will say is that it has close to 600 (in words six hundred members). Unbelievable ! I have long, long harbored the wish to make a monster sampler quilt either using the Dear Jane pattern, The Farmers Wife or the Elm Creek Quilt pattern (is that an American TV series ??).

I have already bought the books with the exception of the Dear Jane one and am wondering if one of them or indeed a combination of the best blocks from each would make the ideal pattern for my precious Hope Valley Fabric ! I really would love to hear your opinion on this. What do you think is the best/ideal/perfect pattern for the Hope Valley fabric collection by Denyse Schmidt.I have had the fabric for a while now and really would love to cut into it but am positively afraid of it in case the quilt I will produce doesn't do it justice.

 

There is one particular QAL though that is right up my street and I am going to join this one. It is run by Faith of Fresh Lemon Quilts, Katie of Swim, Bike, Quilt and Lee of Freshly Pieced and is called the Summer Sampler Series.

   

                                        

 

And I think my Stash of Moda Cross Weave my just be the right fabric for this wonderful QAL.