Fa la la la la la la la la

That's obviously Deck the Halls! Once upon a time before patch-working I was crazily addicted to cross-stitch and embroidery. Yesterday I got the urge to cross-stich so I quickly drafted a plan for a basic garland and stitched it up in no time.

I used a gorgeous check from Loominous by Anna Maria Horner as the background and perle thread for the stitching. I have to admit I love the simple effect. Because I'm feeling rather generous I've put the chart on Payhip as a free download so anyone can have a go if they fancy it.

I'm currently stitching up an embroidered version using bullion knots and other bulky stitches to get a bit of texture. I'm also waiting on some ridiculously tiny embroidery hoops to arrive and I intend to fill them with mini embroideries to put on the Christmas tree so expect to see more free downloads in the near future.

 Catch you soon x

Floral Fancies and friends

Here I am to show you my final contributions to Quilt Now Issue 13. First up, Floral Fancies, a really cute EPP design that can then be appliqued to a backing.

 I used Oakshott solids for my flowers ...

and vintage sheet scraps for my backing.

I used perle thread to hand quilt the centre of each flower...

and to stitch the self-binding in place.

My final contribution this month is my Diamonds Kites and Stars pattern which was included in the free EPP project booklet.

It's another EPP and applique combination which makes it a little more time consuming than straight forward EPP but I think it's worth the extra time. 

In other news, while I'm on the subject of EPP, I've added bonus 6" templates of Hexiestar Tamed to the Mystery BOM section of our website. 

I've been having fun playing with the 6" version and thought you might like to try them out too. Catch you soon x

Blogger's Quilt Festival Spring 2015 - Kaleidoscopic quilt

It's that time of year again folks, all the big boys and girls are off to Quilt Market to see all the fun new fabric that we'll all be coveting and the rest of us get to watch jealously from afar. Thank goodness for Amy and her twice yearly Blogger's Quilt  Festival to keep us all happy looking at the fantastic creations of our online community! It's always fun to find new inspiration and new blogs to read.
I usually have a tricky time deciding which quilt to enter but this year I knew straight away which one I wanted to submit. I designed this Kaleidoscopic quilt for Quilt Now magazine last year and was delighted when it made the front cover of Issue 5!

This lap sized quilt was a real labour of love, 64 foundation pieced blocks was no small task. It was totally worth it though, this is one of my all time favourites. I love all the secondary patterns that this block gives and the colours just make me feel happy. There are so many of my beloved/ hoarded fabrics in here, which I'm sure contributes to its favourite status.

After all the machine work of foundation piecing it was a pleasure to take my time over the hand quilting. I'm a huge fan of chunky hand quilting with Perle thread. I don't have the patience for tiny. neat hand stitches but neat chunky stitches are right up my street. The texture that this type of quilting provides is fantastic, really snuggly, which is just what you need for a lap quilt!

I used three neutral shades of Perle thread in the low volume areas of the quilt and a dusky pink Perle thread to echo quilt the pink kites.

I contained the kaleidoscopic blocks with a scrappy low volume border and finished off with a black and white pezzy binding. I can't resist showing you the professional photo on the cover of  the magazine; I will never tire of seeing my creation right there on the cover.

So there you have it, I'm entering this in the Modern Quilts category purely because I designed this quilt on the iPad. You must check out all the other quilts in the category (and the other categories of course) and if you like this quilt or indeed any of the other quilts you can nominate up to 3 quilts for a Viewer's choice award. Nominations are open until the 21st May and voting commences on the 22nd May. I recommend getting yourself a cuppa and a comfy seat to trawl through the fantastic inspiration over there!

Thanks for visiting, I hope you'll come back again sometime. 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

Sneaky Stars

I'm really excited to share with you a project that I've been working on for a collaboration with Justine at Simply Solids. Let me introduce the Sneaky Stars quilt.

I'm really thrilled with how this pattern has turned out. I've been working on it for quite a few months so it kind of feels like my baby. It's a super quick quilt to piece and I really hope that I'll see versions of it popping up on blogs/flickr when the pattern is released ;)

Justine will be selling kits for this in time for Festival of Quilts. I'll update you when the kits go live :) This version of the quilt will be available to view on Justine's stand at Festival of Quilts. For those of you who won't be there here are a few more pics of it.

I wanted the solids to do all the talking so I did some very simple echo quilting in white and a rather lovely blue, variegated 12wt Aurifil. I wasn't sure if it would be possible to machine sew with the 12 wt but it went through with no problems :)

The improv pieced backing really shows the star quilting up beautifully, even if I do say so myself :)

I've also made 2 other versions of the pattern so you can see how versatile the design is. First up is a baby quilt that I made for Amanda's little man. I used Noteworthy by Sweetwater and a natural Moda crossweave. Excuse the rather uninspiring picture.

Here are some close-ups so you can see the pretty fabric:

The cross-weave made this little quilt really snuggly, just what a new baby needed :) You've already seen a sneaky peek at the other version that I made. I thought it was about time I made hubby a quilt so I put this one together for his birthday in June.

I dug out the perle thread for the quilting on this one. There are 3 different colours but it's difficult to capture them properly with the camera. Either way it stands out beautifully on the black solid. 

So there you have it. The Sneaky Stars quilt kit coming soon to now available at Simply Solids! I'd better crack on with writing the pattern now ;) Stay cool this weekend. Catch you soon x

Blogger's Quilt Festival - Larking Around

I'm joining in with Amy's Blogger's Quilt Festival after a friendly poke from Susan. If you're visiting our blog from the Festival for the first time then I hope you'll find something you like here enough to stop by again :) If you're a regular visitor you will already have seen some of the progress of the quilt I'm entering in the Throw Quilt Category. I'll quickly recap for you. I started this quilt in November 2011 but only finished it yesterday (hangs head in shame). I was so excited when I got the full fat quarter set of Lark by Amy Butler that I started cutting into it pretty much straight away. I had a thing for equilateral triangles at the time so it was a no-brainer that I would use them in this quilt which I named Larking Around.

For one reason or another I shelved it, after only constructing 2 rows of triangles, until July 2012 when I added 4 more rows of triangles. Then life got busy and it made it's way back into my rather large WIP box. Finally, last weekend I rescued it from the box and got the top finished and basted to the backing! When Susan told me that Blogger's Quilt Festival started today I cussed quite a bit (nothing new!) but was determined to get it finished so I could join in. So now for the details. I used Kona black solid for the background fabric and strips cut from fat quarters of Lark for the triangles and the border, then backed with one of the black and white prints from Lark. I pieced and machine quilted an echo around the central hexagon panel and the strippy border with Aurifil. 

I hand quilted the diamond shapes in between the hexagons with a vivid yellow perle cotton that doesn't show up very well in photos but looks gorgeous against the black in real life. 

I bound with a nice black and white print from Cocoon.

And that's it, after almost 2 years of procrastinating, a finished lap/throw quilt.

I love it! I hope you've enjoyed looking at it too :) 

The finished quilt is approx. 43" by 49" so the perfect size for keeping my legs warm while sewing in front of the telly. Right there I sound about 80 and I'm really not ;) Don't forget to check out all the other lovely quilts! Thanks for stopping by, catch you soon x

Finished

I've finished a few projects this week. First up, I joined another bee, the Simply Solids: a modern Bee, and this is the first month I've had to make blocks for it. Patti asked for this winged square block, it was super quick to put together so I made 2.

 Then I got on and made this whirlygig for Karen's month in the HipBees.

So with my bee commitments out the way I got on and finished the Marcelle Medallion quilt! I think it is my most favourite quilt ever. I was all set to take some nice photos outside when the heaven's opened...grrr. Instead I just took some dodgy shots around the house.

On the sofa

 It's quite a big quilt, definitely a great size for snuggling under while scoffing chocolate :)

On the bannister

On the bed

 I machine quilted a few straight lines around the borders, enough to fix it in place and then set to it with some lime green perle thread.

 I bound it with a brush stroke print from Summersville and backed it with my go to favourite, Nummer, from Ikea.

 You can't beat a pretty folded quilt :)

I'm quite sad that this one is finished now, I think I might have to make another soon! Catch you soon x