Blogger's Quilt Festival - Art Quilt - Never Forgotten

It's Blogger's Quilt Festival time! Amy does a fantastic job of organising this online festival to keep us busy when we're sulking about not being at International Quilt Market. Hello, if you're visiting for the first time I hope you'll stay to have a look around :) If you're a regular I apologise for bombarding you with quilts you've already seen :)

I've made quite a few quilts this year so it's been tough to decide which ones to enter. I've settled on two this time around. This is my second entry, my Never Forgotten improv quilt.

I made this quilt to enter my very first quilt show at British Quilt and Stitch Village last month. There was a special theme commemorating World War 1 and the 70th anniversary of D Day. I chose to commemorate members of my family that had served in both of these wars, some that came home injured and some who never returned. There is lots of symbolism in this little quilt e.g. the red pops of colour symbolise a poppy wreath. Two of the red fabrics I chose to use in the "wreath" are stars and stripes, they signify James and George Dawson who were born in USA to British parents. James never came home from France but thankfully, my Great-Grandad George did. There is more information about this quilt and my reasons for making it here if you're interested :) 

I have to say I'm really proud of this little beauty. It finished up around 40" square. Well, square in the loosest sense of the word. I tried squaring it up but it just kept on shrinking and for fear of having to submit it as a mug rug I gave up ;) 

Here are some of my favourite bits in more detail:

The poppy wreath

The stamped centre of the poppy wreath - Never Forgotten

Crazy straight line quilting - tram lines

I used 5 different colours of Aurifil thread for the quilting because I wanted to echo the colours in the fabrics without any one colour overpowering things. This was easily the scariest part for me as I loved the way the top looked when it was finished and was worried that my quilting would ruin it.

Clearer close-up of quilting

In the end I am thrilled with the effect, it has made the quilt really tactile. Improv piecing does not come easily to me as I really prefer a lot of structure and control within my patchwork projects. This project really flowed for me though and I'm sure that's because I felt so emotionally connected with the subject matter. 
Thanks for stopping by. Don't forget to check out all the other awesome quilts in this category :) Catch you soon x 

Blogger's Quilt Festival - Large quilt - Not-so Lonestar

It's Blogger's Quilt Festival time! Amy does a fantastic job of organising this online festival to keep us busy when we're sulking about not being at International Quilt Market. Hello, if you're visiting for the first time I hope you'll stay to have a look around :) If you're a regular I apologise for bombarding you with quilts you've already seen :)

I've made quite a few quilts this year so it's been tough to decide which ones to enter. I've settled on two this time around. This is my first entry, my version of Kaffe Fassett's awesome Not-so Lonestar Quilt.

This quilt was a long time in the making! After a couple of false starts I finally got to grips with it over the Christmas and New Year holidays. It's an absolutely massive quilt, finishing up at over 90" square. To get a better sense of the scale here's a similar picture but with 5'5" Jess in the shot :)

This quilt was a real labour of love! All those diamonds are individually hand cut and there are hundreds of them. I used Innocent Crush by Anna Maria Horner and Soul Blossoms by Amy Butler and just love the way that they play together. As this was such a monster quilt there was no way I was going to attempt quilting myself, so I sent it off to the amazingly talented Trudi Wood for her to work her long-arm magic. The feathers that Trudi quilted have taken this quilt to a whole new level for me.

There are tons more photos in previous posts about this quilt so I won't overload you with them all here. This quilt now inhabits our bedroom and I'm working up the motivation to get a bigger bed to accommodate it more comfortably.

It's not perfectly pieced but it's as good as I'm capable of at this stage in my patchworking life. I think it will be a favourite for a very long time! I smile every time I see it, so that can't be a bad thing :)
Thanks for taking a look around. Don't forget to visit all the other awesome quilts on show in this category. Catch you soon x

Sew Mama Sew Giveaway day

It's that time of year again! Sew Mama Sew are holding the first of their twice yearly giveaway days/weeks. We love a giveaway around here so we had to join in again :) With no firm idea of what we were going to offer up this time round I went to bed Saturday night with the seed of an idea...what would happen if I paired > with +...Strange but true! I woke up Sunday morning with the beginning of a plan and after much faffing around with paper, pencil and ruler I was ready to start making. I grabbed a stack of Japanese fabrics from Polka dot tea fabrics, a dash of Vintage Happy by Lori Holt, some precious Dream On from Moda and some luscious denim yarn dyed linen. With plenty of encouragement from the lovely gang on Instagram I've ended up with this:

We thought it would be nice to let the winner decide whether they would like this to be a cushion or a wall-hanging. It's going to finish up around 24" square! So to be in with a chance to win this (finished by me obviously!):
Please leave a comment here with a name suggestion for this pattern.
For a bonus chance to win, leave another comment to let us know if you are a follower, new or regular

The winner will be chosen by random number generator.

There will also be a small surprise gift for the best pattern name so get your thinking caps on :) If you check back on 17th May you might just find the templates for this design waiting for you, just saying ;)

The giveaway is open to everyone. The draw will close on Friday 16th May at 5pm PST but as we're in the UK and will be sound asleep at the equivalent 1am you might sneak in before I wake up on the 17th May.  So now all that's left for you to do is go visit some of the other fab giveaways.
Catch you soon x

Edited to add: Please excuse me if I don't manage to reply to all the comments on this giveaway post :)
Edited to add the winners are Catrin Lewis and Sarah@Sew Me.

FAL -Hexiestars cushion

My day started with the return of my quilts from Quilt and Stitch Village, which also meant the judges comments! I was braver than I thought I would be taking a peek at them and thankfully they were better than I expected :) Here are the comments for the Brit Print Girls Medallion Quilt...

and the comments for the Never Forgotten improv quilt. I wondered how the judges would react to the improv quilt as it was a very traditional show, so I was delighted that they liked my "refreshingly different interpretation of the theme" :) Also delighted that there were no ticks in the "needs attention" box!

After such positive comments I will be brave enough to enter another quilt competition in the future :) This afternoon I managed to squeeze in some much needed sewing time and finished up my Hexiestars cushion! I'm so pleased to able to cross this one off my FAL list :)

It was really difficult to get a decent picture today as it was so grey outside but I was too impatient to take finished pictures, sorry. I didn't want to compete with the colours of the stars so used a grey variegated Aurifil thread to echo quilt the hexagons...

and create a wonky asterisk through the stars.

I'm thrilled with how it has turned out and I've been overwhelmed with the response to it over on Instagram :) Don't forget the templates are available here if you fancy having a go yourself! I'd love to see your version if you do, so please use #hexiestars over on Instagram or add a picture to our Flickr group :)

Catch you soon x

Winner

Thanks to all who put their name in for a free copy of Love Patchwork and Quilting magazine. Mr Random Number Generator chose:

The winner is:

Anita, I'm off to email you for your address now. Sorry you couldn't all win one. Catch you soon x

Freebie

Hello again. I hope you're not sick of me yet...I can't remember the last time I blogged this frequently! Sewing has been in short supply this week as I've been resting a trapped nerve in my back following my trip to Quilt and Stitch Village. I do, however, have something worth blogging about!
The lovely folks at Love Patchwork and Quilting Magazine returned my Ice Cream Dreams quilt today and in the package was a free copy of Issue 8!

I'm already a subscriber so I thought it would be nice to give it away to one of our lovely readers :) So if you're interested in receiving this free copy from me just leave a comment here. If there's more than one of you I'll use Mr Random Number Generator to choose a winner. I'll close comments on Monday 5th May at around 10pm (BST). Catch you soon x  

Precuts

Fat Quarterly Ezine Issue 17 Precuts III is on sale today and there may just be a little something designed by me in there :) This is my Battenberg medallion quilt. I used the highly colourful Sewing Box by Gina Martin for this lap sized quilt. It's an extremely simple medallion quilt perfect for beginners :)

Now that this issue is available I can show you more detailed pictures of the Brit Print Girl medallion that I exhibited at Quilt and Stitch Village :) For this version of the quilt I scaled down the block sizes and added an extra 2 borders, one of half square triangles and another solid frame. This one finished up around 42" square.

All prints used in this quilt (except the binding which is Joel Dewberry) are screen printed here in Blighty by the crazily talented gals Karen Lewis, Lu Summers and Leanne Fanny.

Sometimes simple blocks are all that is necessary to make a fabric sing :)

I just love the way they all play together :)

I really enjoyed showcasing the fabulous creations of these "Brit Print Girls" and was particularly proud to have been able to show them off at Quilt and Stitch Village. I think we can safely say that I am not afraid pattern ;) Catch you soon x