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

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