Story of a Quilt - Ripples in the Sand

This quilt has been in the making for quite some time. The fabrics arrived in stock in my quilt shop in July 2017. I even started making the quilt that same month and had the finished quilt top on display on my stand at the Festival of Quilts last year.

But for some reason, I didn't get around to quilting it. Until a couple of months ago.

I think the impetus to finish came about because I decided to use it as a filler project for the magazine. And I'm so glad I have finished it as I love it. I haven't quilted it as densely as I usually do, with the result that it's a lot softer and snugglier than some of my other recent quilts. A lesson to self there maybe? It's still quilted enough to create dimension and interest though.

The fabrics are from a collection called Sand in my Shoes designed by McKenna Ryan for Robert Kaufman. I love how they seem to blend with each other so I wanted to create a block that would reflect that and allow the colours to flow.

A mixture of different sized HSTs and I had the design I wanted. Something fairly simple but looked a lot more interesting once the fabrics played their part, which is my raison d'etre when it comes to designing quilts for my shop.

Mirror image blocks in alternate rows helped create that flow.

I like to use most of the fabrics from a collection if I can as hopefully that will mean they sell more evenly so this quilt used 17 of the 27 fabrics in the collection. The ones I didn't use were the ombres and a couple of other scene-type fabrics.

I auditioned several of the ombre prints for the inner border in a post you can read about here, and plumped for the bright green ombre which is the Meadow colour.

To echo the flow of the quilt, I quilted it in freehand wavy parallel lines, like ripples in the water. This may end up being the last quilt I quilt on my trusty old New Home Janome. It's served me well over the years, but thanks to a recent big birthday, I've upgraded to a Janome Atelier 3 which has a much bigger throat.

I backed the quilt with one of the fabrics from the collection. Quilting thread was King Tut #905, Baby Blankets and the wadding, Hobbs Heirloom 80/20. The binding is the same green (Meadow) ombre used in the inner border.

The quilt was featured in the April 2018 issue of P&Q.

Story of a Quilt - Chroma

Chroma is the latest collection of handcrafted batiks designed by Alison Glass for Andover Fabrics. I often see fabric collections online and slowly fall in love with them. Such was the case with Chroma.

It was quite a slow burn in fact and the quilt I've loved the most that Alison designed with the fabrics was a simple one of squares joined together.

I finally took the plunge and ordered the whole collection, all 27 bolts! They're listed in my online shop.

I felt that a quilt made from this collection needed to use most, if not all, of them so I decided to make a really quick quilt which used all but one of them. I also felt the fabrics needed to be able to speak for themselves so decided on a large-scale HST quilt harking back to that favourite Alison Glass design. I would have made the quilt in a matter of days if it weren't for feline helpers!

Helping with the layout

Helping press the backing

Double trouble helping with the quilting

I'm really happy with the finished quilt; it's got a lovely glow about it. The finished size is 63" square. The HSTs are 9" square. I backed it with an AG Sunprint I had on the shelves and quilted it using King Tut 918, Joseph's Coat. The wadding is Hobbs Heirloom 80/20.

The quilt will appear as a project in the February 2018 issue of P&Q. It's my current favourite quilt, of course!