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.

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

What I am doing now - Feb

I had a free weekend last weekend..........and used it wisely; well it was Groundhog Day and I was kind of hoping that would mean I would be very productive if I spent the day sewing and had to relive the day over and over again!

 

I managed to make a few more scrappytripalong blocks in my red and white fabrics. I'm just making them as and when. Here are the first four

 

 

 

As I make more I am realising that whilst I thought it would be quite clever to restrict my fabric palette to red and white fabrics, it is also quite limiting and a little bit of me wishes I had continued with making a totally scrappy one like this.

 
I'll keep persevering with the red and whities for now though.

I've been doing a bit of quilting this week on my Kaleidoscope quilt. As this isn't a traditional quilt, each stage of the quilting needs a bit of thinking and every now and then I hit a bit of a brick wall, but then it's a fantastic feeling when I break through that wall. I'm quilting some parallel lines for some background quilting at the moment.

 

The other thing I have been working on the last week or so is a red and white challenge quilt that my mother has issued to my sister and me: to make a quilt 1m square using a bag of red and white fabrics she gave us at Christmas. My first reaction was "oh". I was already making a New York Beauty style red and white quilt, had started the red and white scrappytripalong and really didn't want to make another red and white quilt. Plus I don't have much time for making quilts for me so any time taken out making this challenge quilt was going to be time taken away from my own quilting. So I have compromised, kind of. I've made something quickly by machine but will probably hand quilt it.

It echoes a modern minimalist phase that I am going through at the moment.

 

 

I foundation pieced the fabric strips to ensure they were accurate and straight. Each one is 3/4" wide. They would have been all over the place if I had just pieced them by machine!
I'm thinking about quilting it with cross hatching, possibly in red and white threads. Might experiment with doing the cross hatching vertically in one colour and horizontally in the other.

Seeing as I was working with my red and white prints I made a start on the next block for my NYB quilt, really want to crack on with this now!

 
Linking up with Lily's Quilts Fresh Sewing Day post and Small Blog Meet

Weeding Time!

This unseasonably warm, some might say hot, weather we have been having this week has meant I have had time to get out into the garden a few times.
Today I have been weeding. As I've said before, I am loathe to do too much digging around as I'm not sure what a lot of the things growing in the garden are, but there are definitely a lot of weeds in the flower beds now so I spent a lovely hour or so tidying up one bit in the early evening sunshine. I had a constant companion the whole time I was working and he was right by my side bless him, though of course he disappeared to find some better sun when I came to take a photo!

Think I can fit in a bit more piecing this evening. Yesterday I joined the last blocks on to the rest of the row so tonight I'm cutting out the pieces for C7 :o)