2017 - A Review in Quilts

So, as the year draws to a close, did I stick to those New Year's Resolutions?

When you set yourself goals in a specific area, such as your hobby, it's probably easier to stick to them. So taking a quick peak at my review of 2016 (which you can read here), it looks like my aim as usual was to be more prolific and make more quilts. I feel like I have been more productive this year but looking back to last year, I've completed the same number of quilts (five) which is funny! Although all of these quilts have been made for the magazine when a deadline is a keen incentive to finish something on time! If you scroll back through my posts you can read my 'Story of a Quilt' series of posts where I've written about each quilt as I've finished it.

My last finish of the year is this quick pieced quilt using the Chroma collection of fabrics from Alison Glass.

Chroma Quilt

I think my main goal from a year ago was to do more quilting for me and that's the main area I have fallen down. I don't think I have even touched my long term projects of Tula Pink's City Sampler, or my Splendid Sampler blocks. I might have done a little bit of sewing on my Sylvia's Bridal Sampler quilt which is a hand sewing project and I think I got my longest WIP out once a month or so ago when I did a bit of hand quilting one evening.

I participated in a hexie sewalong this year making one, yes just one, hexagon a day for 100 days and believe it or not I managed not to stay completely up to date with this! Although I did finish all 100 hexies and have been sewing them into flowers as I go. I used fabrics dyed by Heidi Stoll Weber and have just started making a scrappy low volume background to applique them onto. I'd really like to make progress  on that over the winter.

A pile o' hexies

I'm going to be 50 next year which is a scary prospect. It suddenly feels like half my life is over and yet you feel the same inside as you did twenty, thirty years ago. I think I need to make it my main New Year's resolution for 2018 to finish my longest WIP which is a kaleidoscope-style quilt inspired by the work of Paula Nadelstern. I think I probably started it over a decade ago having been inspired by an annual quilt competition at the Quilt Museum in Paducah, Kentucky 'New Quilts from Old Favourites'. Whichever year was the year for using the Kaleidoscope block was probably the year I started this quilt! I think it would be fitting if I managed to finish this quilt during my 50th year, don't you?

Check back with me in a year's time to see if I managed it!

Joanna

Story of a Quilt - Magnolia Metallics

This is another quilt I've been busy working on for the magazine. The fabrics were very kindly donated by Winbourne Fabrics who are the UK distributors for Moda. The collection is called Magnolia Metallics and is a classic Christmas-style collection, but not overly so.

Magnolia Metallics aka Cactus Flower Quilt

Designing a quilt using a Layer Cake or Jelly Roll is always an extra challenge as you usually need to tweak any designs to suit cutting the finite amount of fabric that you have. With this block I needed to use half square triangles to create the 'spikes' of the flower instead of a Flying Geese unit as there wasn't quite enough fabric to do this with the 10" squares.

I made a test block for this quilt as I couldn't afford to make any mistakes.

I finally found the time to get piecing. It was a struggle to get going for a bit and I had to delay the project going in the mag by an issue. I think I also didn't twig how big it was going to get! Forty two, 12" blocks makes for a big quilt! The finished size of the quilt is 76" x 88".

Image credit Sharon Cooper Photography

The additional fabrics in the quilt were three fabrics from Moda's awesome Grunge range and a couple of prints from the Magnolia Metallics collection for the Four Patch units.

I used Hobbs 80/20 wadding and backed the quilt with the Cream Grunge. It took me a little while to decide how best to quilt it. I find it hard to even think about doing an all-over pattern so I settled for my usual wiggle using King Tut thread no. 936 which is called Pharoah's Treasures. It was an ideal match as it's red, green and gold. The binding was the green holly print used in the Four Patch units.

The great thing about this design is that it lends itself to be made with any Layer Cake so the pattern I'll be selling of it is called Cactus Flower.

The quilt will be appearing in the November 2017 issue of British Patchwork & Quilting magazine which is out on 20 October 2017.

Joanna

Quilting.......MIA?

Looking through my Instagram account and the lack of a blog post, you'd think I hadn't been doing any quilt making in recent months! Very few images of quilts or WIP have been posted. Really not sure why as I have been piecing and quilting most days. It's possibly because the quilts I've finished so far this year have been for the magazine.

First up was a quick little quilt featuring some fabrics from Makower and the Very Hungry Caterpillar.

It's not my usual thing by any means but it was fun to make and use ideas I'd picked up elsewhere.

The next finish was another quilt for the mag, Galaxy Stars. This used another collection from Makower. They've been kind enough to supply the fabrics so I can make the quilts but I've also ordered them so I can sell kits.

Another fairly easy and quick quilt to make. I ran out of time and would have liked to have done a bit more quilting on it, but magazine deadlines wait for no man!

I've been working on a couple of other design ideas too, one using the V&Co ombres that I love. I've had to put this to one side for the time being as I'm working on another project for the magazine using the Blue Sky collection of fabrics from Makower.

So not exactly missing in action but doing stuff that I can't show for a time!