Candy twists

It's that time of the month again; Quilt Now Issue 4 is on the shelves in UK shops. The beautiful cover quilt is by the very talented Jessie Fincham and I'm seriously tempted to try one myself.

This month's block of the month uses the tube technique commonly used for Scrappy trips - quick and easy :)

 I was thrilled to discover that Katy managed to squeeze in the BOM project too, so it's not only available online this month. Who doesn't need a hessian present sack?!

There's also an easy peasy quilt by yours truly between the covers this month - Candy Twists.

I love the styling with that cute cot. I used the rather lovely Winter's Lane by Kate and Birdie Paper Co for my version of Candy Twists. It's such a great line from last year and the colour palette says winter without the overt novelty element that can sneak in to Christmas fabrics. Sorry for using the C word, it's still a bit early in the year to be using that word. 

I'm hoping to get chance to sew up a variation of this design in some brighter colours...

Catch you soon x 

Blogger's Quilt Festival Fall 2014 - Octastring quilt

While the great and good of the quilting industry have been hustling at International Quilt Market I've been busy putting the finishing touches to this quilt with the sole intention of being able to share it in Amy's  Blogger's Quilt Festival. My Octastring quilt has been a long time in the making! Apologies to regular visitors for re-visiting familiar territory, I'll keep it brief ;) I designed the block in 2012, originally intending to use my Flea Market Fancy  and Hope Valley stash, but quickly ran out of steam for the project.

A year later I had a light-bulb moment, why not get the ladies of the HipBees to make the blocks for me?! By this time Denyse Schmidt had released yet more fabulous fabric ranges to plunder for this project. I threw in prints from Shelburne Falls and Florence to supplement the Hope Valley and Flea Market Fancy. I received 10 fabulous blocks and added 2 of my own to complete the lap-sized quilt top. I'm a sucker for a secondary pattern!

Then, as is usual for me the WIP got put to one side yet again. It sat like this on my design wall for way too long! The problem was mainly that I felt the top needed a border but I didn't want anything too big in case it detracted from the design.

Finally, last week, I added a 2 and a half inch solid border and cracked on with finishing the project! I pieced a simple backing for the quilt using some of the scrap remnants from the original block construction and some yardage of one of my favourite prints from the Flea Market Fancy reprint.

I did a very simple quilting treatment as there's so much going on in this quilt already with all those prints. I used a nice aqua blue Aurifil thread for some straight line machine quilting then echo quilted the octagons with chunky hand quilting and Perle 8 thread.

The finishing touch was the self-binding, slightly fiddly but well worth the faff.

I'm absolutely delighted with how the quilt has turned out and I'm so thankful to my fabulous bee mates for making it happen!
This quilt finished up at around  45" by 58", so perfect for keeping my lap warm in the evenings when watching tv. I can't resist leaving you with the finished quilt again :)

I'm linking this one up to the Original Design category of the Blogger's quilt festival. If you like it maybe you'd be able to see your way clear to voting for it or maybe even nominating it for a Viewer's choice award. Either way it's well worth visiting Amy's site to check out all the other awesome entries!

If you fancy making an Octastring project yourself, you'll find the Octastring block details on our website.
Thanks for visiting today, I hope you'll visit again. Catch you soon x

This little piggy stayed home...

Please excuse the radio silence, I've been very busy stitching and pattern writing and ran out of steam to blog. I'm here for a flying to visit to show a couple of little things I've made for the very lovely Katy Jones. I'm sure most of you will know that Katy is heading off to Quilt Market to launch her first fabric collection for Art Gallery Fabrics. I had the great privilege of working with some of Katy's knit strike offs but I will admit to perspiring more than is appropriate for a lady while cutting out a little girl's dress. I had only sewn with knit fabric once so I was taking a bit of a chance volunteering to make something with Katy's precious strike offs but fortune favours the brave ;) I used this lovely pattern for the dress, stripped down to its most basic form due to the joyous no-fray properties of knit fabric. The end result is rather cute.

The knit has a beautiful drape and I would recommend it to anyone! I just wish I could get away with wearing this colour...I am contemplating it in the skirt of a dress  because I just love the print! Here's a closer look at the detail of the print...yummy, I tell you!

Then, last weekend, I thought it would be nice to do an embroidery for Katy using the Priory Square artwork. There were a fair few hours worth of stitching involved but I had a fantastic cheering squad over on Instagram!

This slightly crumpled piece has been turned into something truly beautiful by Katy! I'm so thrilled to have played a tiny part in the making of Katy's booth. I can't wait to see pictures of the finished booth next week! More importantly though, I can't wait to get my hands on the the fabric, I definitely need yardage of this line!  Catch you soon x