In the works

I've been having fun playing with a new easy-peasy quilt design - The Easy Peasy Wonderland Quilt. This one has been brewing in my head for a year or so and I just hadn't found time to put it into action, so, it was most serendipitous that Katarina Roccella released her Wonderland fabric collection with Art Gallery Fabrics at the end of last year.

I'm loving how the blocks are looking so far. I've made Drink Me, Eat Me and the Flamingo, next on the list is the Top Hat. Here's a sneak peek at the layout I'm working towards.

The pattern is almost ready for sending out to testers so if you have free time this month and fancy testing for me leave a comment below or email me reene@nelliesniceties.com and I'll contact you when the pattern is ready.

That's a wrap!

I have been counting down the days to finally be able to share with you my finished Quilt Now BOM quilt! Today by subscription copy (arrived ahead of it's Thursday UK release) and I had pretty much ripped the wrapper open before it hit the doormat. Issue 13 is Quilt Now's first birthday edition and it is crammed full of beauties this month. I've got a few projects in this issue so I'll tell you about those another day and dedicate today to the BOM.  Prepare for photo overload!

It has been a great pleasure to create the first Mystery BOM for Quilt Now magazine and I'm so honoured that Katy trusted me to deliver the goods on this one. Here's the finished quilt in the magazine. All of the fabrics used in this quilt are from Art Gallery Fabric collections and they play together beautifully.

It is very difficult to capture just how beautiful this quilt is in real life. It was also very difficult to fit the whole thing into the picture.

I sent the finished top away to my amazingly talented friend, Trudi, for quilting as there was no way I could do this one justice even if my shoulder/neck had been up to the challenge. The quilting just sent this quilt into another level of awesome, even if I do say so myself ;) Trudi custom quilted each block and just, WOWOWOW!

The central medallion

The Dresden Fans and solid border

The vines and flowers

The Bargello technique blocks and solid border

The Trapunto-effect bow

The Fast Flying geese blocks

The crazy patchwork hearts

The Dresden corners

The Prairie Points block

The Suffolk Puffs/Yo-yos

I somehow forgot to take pictures of the Reverse Applique flowers and the Gathered hexagons but they received equally awesome treatment.

The quilt is backed with the Steepening Awakening print from Priory Square by Katy Jones and bound with a multitude of scraps from the prints I'd used in the quilt and was pieced and quilted with Aurifil thread. I'm really looking forward to this one coming home to me but I think it might be a while yet as it might be paying a trip to the Festival of Quilts, so you could have the opportunity to see it in real life if you are in Birmingham in August.

I'm quite sad that this BOM is finished but I'm super excited to have started work on the next one, an all solids quilt...

Our lovely friend, Sarah, sewed along with me this year and has already finished her version of the quilt top. It's gorgeous so you should really pop over there to take a look!
I'll be back soon to share my other projects in this issue. Catch you soon x

Fat Quarterly - Cartwheels

What seems like forever ago I made a little hot-pad for Fat Quarterly e-zine using my Cartwheels EPP templates. Due to the whole Vat-Mess nonsense towards the end of last year the e-zine temporarily ceased trading but now, thankfully, it is back up and running on Payhip. You'll find my hot-pad and lots of other gorgeous paper piecing projects in Issue 20.

I used Katy's Priory Square fabric for my version and it now takes pride of place on our new kitchen island :)

Here are a couple of shots of the island while it's still nice and tidy. It's a Stenstorp from Ikea and it is a perfect match for our existing kitchen which did not come from Ikea, bonus!

I intend to put a vase of flowers on there eventually but the worktop is newly waxed so I don't want to spoil it yet.

Catch you soon x

By Hand and a discount!

Hello all. I'm still suffering with the trapped nerve issue which is positively doing my head in! I'm awaiting MRI results which I hope will guide the people in the know to sort me out! Sewing machine time is seriously limited, I'm talking 5 minutes at the very most before I feel like crying, so there has been lots of hand-stitching and pattern writing going on to keep my equilibrium. First, I pattern tested a new design by Julianna which can be either Foundation Pieced or done with EPP. It goes together very quickly and is really quite fun to piece. You can find the free pattern here. Here's my version using some lovely Denyse Schmidt prints.

I also joined an Anna Maria Horner swap on Instagram before the pain got really bad so I've had to drum up a design that I can hand-piece so I don't have to drop out. This is one quarter of it; that is a lot of piecing! Thankfully the deadline is June so I should have plenty of time to finish this one :) Typically for me it's a riot of colour so I hope it won't scare my partner off too much!

I've just finished up the last blocks (all hand sewn) for the current Quilt Now BOM and am really looking forward to finishing the top off so I can send it away to Trudi to work her magic on it. You just know that it's going to be epic when Trudi is finished with it! I'm so glad I decided to piece this medallion as we went along rather than leaving it all to the end or I'd be in major hot-water right now!   I can't believe that Quilt Now has been around for almost a year now, bonkers. I'm really excited to be doing the next BOM for them too!!! Sorry for all the exclamation marks it's one of those days.
Finally, because we all know I need another project like a hole in the head, I've started up another Wafers EPP project, to give me a break from the epic piecing of the swap project, using a lovely selection of prints from Art Gallery Fabrics. I'm loving these earthy prints!

This leads nicely to the discount part of the title. I've just restocked our Etsy shop with some of our instant download patterns/templates (including this one) as it appears that Etsy will now be dealing with the VAT issue. To celebrate you can get 20% off everything in the Etsy shop this weekend only (10-12 April 2015) by entering INSTA20 at the checkout.
Hoping all is good in your world. Catch you soon x

Prairie points

Not much to report from these parts at the moment. Creativity is crawling along thanks to an irritated nerve in my neck that is giving me the equivalent of sciatica in my arm and shoulder which is just peachy when you need to move said arm to use the sewing machine! I've had to do some quick thinking to rejig my plans for the Quilt Now BOM to reduce some of the reliance on the sewing machine for the final few blocks.

As Issue 9 has just hit the shelves of shops in the UK I can show you what we've done so far and I have to admit to being delighted with it.

All of the fabrics are from various collections for Art Gallery Fabrics and they all play beautifully together. If you're on Instagram you can search #quiltnowbom to see pictures of other BOM quilts in progress.
This month's BOM technique is Folded patchwork Prairie Points. A super quick technique that demanded a fun BOM project - a travel memory game. I dug out some of my Laurie Wisbrun and Heather Ross hoard for a bit of fussy cutting fun.

The free pattern will be  is available on the Quilt Now website soon now. I'm off to finish watching the Great British Sewing Bee now. Catch you soon x

Shields

Issue 8 of Quilt Now hits the UK shops on Thursday. This month's theme is monochrome and you'll find that there's nothing dull about it! Lynne's Cherie quilt graces the front page and snuggled up next to it is my Shields cushion :)

I spent the Christmas holiday manically sewing EPP to get it ready for the magazine. It's a whopping 28"! I've included lots of step by step instruction in the hopes that confident beginnners will be able to tackle it as well as those more familiar with EPP. I used lots of Art Gallery Fabrics low volume prints and some rather delicious Free Spirit solids. I'm delighted with the end result! I'm sure it would look pretty in colour too :)

This month's block of the month technique is fast-flying geese . I do love a quick block!

The bonus companion project is a cushion this month. I'm sure it will be up  Available now on the Quilt Now website shortly too. I used the flying geese to create a chevron effect. Very quick but effective. The gorgeous prints are from Cleta by AGF in-house studio and Jungle Avenue by Sara Lawson both for Art Gallery Fabrics.

I'll be back later this week. Hope you're all enjoying your weekend. 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

It's a family affair!

Today the postman brought great joy in the form of Issue 2 of Quilt Now! Along with the full size pattern sheet there's a square quilting ruler this month.

I've already given you a peek at the Block of the Month project so I won't bore you with that again, but I will show you the blocks for the quilt. Those Art Gallery Fabrics really sing in Dresden fans!

This month Yvonne puts in an appearance too as she has done a reader review!

I also came across this advertisement for the West Country Quilt Show which my sister-in-law is helping to organise. Definitely worth a look for anyone in the area or anyone that doesn't mind travelling to these events!

So, like I said, it's a family affair this month :) Most exciting to me though is that one of my favourite designs to date is featured! Regular visitors will be very familiar with my Sneaky Stars design that I created last year for Justine at Simply Solids to kit for Festival of Quilts. Now I'm delighted that anyone who buys Issue 2 will have access to the pattern too. There were quite a lot of lovely people interested in the pattern last year so I'm hoping that they will still love it and have a go!

It's great to see it photographed and styled by professionals!

For the benefit of those who didn't see my original posts it's works very well in different styles too. Here are 2 others I made last year - The Man Quilt and a quilt for James.

Now I'll leave you all to enjoy the weekend, although I may pop back tomorrow if I can summon the energy to show you a rather lovely charity shop find in the form of a hand-crank Singer! Catch you soon x

Wafers

As predicted I'm back with a finish! My Wafers cushion goes together in a flash and I'm just a little bit in love with it :) I pulled lots of my current favourite fabrics together for this autumnal piece. There's some Anna Maria Horner, Amy Butler, Denyse Schmidt and Katarina Roccella alongside some other Art Gallery fabrics that came in a scrap pack I bought from Simply Solids. The deep orange solid that I used is a Kona FQ that came in my Fat Quarterly Retreat goodies bag.

I used a lovely rust coloured Aurifil thread to do my usual crazy-straight-line quilting.

Quite by accident I noticed that it produced nice little stars in the solid shapes, an added bonus :) After a little rummage in my fabric cupboard I found the perfect backing fabric from my favourite, Anna Maria Horner :) The colours are much richer in real life, for some reason unknown to me it's all washed out in the photos.

I've uploaded the PDF EPP templates for this project to our Payhip page. They're a bargain (even if I do say so myself) at £1. I've included a colouring sheet so you can see how the blocks fit together and practice your fabric combinations. I'm thrilled that it's already started to sell to some very keen ladies over on Instagram :)

Now I need to go and shackle myself to the sewing machine! Catch you soon x