blocks

I've been working on some quilt blocks lately, so it's high time I did a little round up here.

This is a WIP I found yesterday, I'd forgotten all about it, so it was a very happy find. I'm Engish Paper Piecing this, though I found it is a free Robert Kaufman Paper Pieced Pattern. I like to have some hand sewing to do when I'm at events and this was my winter project, which got put aside over Christmas and forgotten about. 

It's very deco and quite striking, I'm going to enjoy continuing with this. It's got me thinking about a monochrome deco quilt, I think I need one.

This block is for a community project which has been organised by Hillary of Entropy Always Wins. The quilt is being made for Merel (@merel_birdblocks on IG), who lives in Amsterdam and has suffered a bleed around her spinal cord. She has limited movement in her legs but is already making progress. You can read more about the project here. The way in which the quilting community comes together to offer support and encouragement is one of the reasons I love quilting so much.

This block is based on the charming work of Kajsa Wikman it was such fun to make, I used some Libery scraps for the birds and fell in love with free machine embroidery again. It's been a long time since I last did any and I'll definitely be incorporating some into a project soon.

These two quilt as you go blocks are for the Siblings Together block drive they are quick and fun to make, so if you have the time I know they would appreciate your donation. 

Siblings Together is a charity that runs summer camps for children that are separated by the care system, they come together and get to play and spend time with each other just like other siblings. At the end of the camp each child gets to take home a quilt, which will remind them of their time spent at the camp, and the good times they had with their sibling.

This year the quilt group are hoping to reach their target of 100 quilts and are just past the half way point. If you can donate a block or two, or even better a whole quilt it will help enormously. 

 

  

make it - stash busting

I have started this year with a good stride and intend to make a large dent in my fabric hoard. There is so much of it, it's beyond ridiculous.

I have many unfinished projects and I desperately need to tackle them. I need to make up the patterns that I have bought, with the fabric that has been sitting there, oh so patiently and I need to finish things as I go.

First up is Little Misses quilt, which I started about two and a half years ago, gulp. This week I have basted it and it's ready to be hand quilted, yes I know this will take forever, but it will be beautiful and worth it in the end. 

I am making one for each of my girls and I have hand quilted Missy Big's quilt. It has a lovely texture and drape to it and is just waiting to be bound. They will both be finished before the end of the year, I promise!! You can read about how they started here.

These cushions were a super quick and easy make, the girls choose their fabrics ages ago and have been waiting... 

These neck cushions have also been in the pipeline for too long, so glad to have ticked three things off the list this week and made a (very) small dent in the stash! These were made using this pattern from QuiltMag. 

It has been very satisfying to start and finish things in a week, lets see if I can keep it up.  

cool colours, calm improv

I'm in love with this quilt, it seems to be very calm and soothing. It's not my usual colourway of choice, but I'm finding it very pleasing. Duck Egg blue seems to have that effect on me.

I made this up as a sample for a recent show I attended, it's improv, as you can see and I didn't labour too much over the placement of the prints and solids. Once you let go and just cut and sew, cut and sew, you begin to see your work in a slightly less 'control freak' sort of way, or at least this is how it works for me.

I used four colours of Kona cotton and a selection of my stone and duck egg blue prints. I cut the solids into strips and the prints into chunky rectangles and a few strips. I marked out on the floor (no fancy design wall here) roughly the size I wanted the quilt to be so I had somewhere to lay out my pieces after I had stitched them together. 

I then roughly laid out my blocks, of varying shape and size to create a strip which was the full width of the quilt. I joined up the blocks, adding and trimming as necessary, until I had a full width pieced together.

I repeated this process until I had enough strips for the full quilt and then joined all the strips together.

The back has a one off printed panel positioned slightly off centre. I printed this in stone and duck egg blue with the different designs overlapping and creating interesting patterns.

This is a cot sized quilt, 115cm x 125cm. At some point soon I'm hoping to take custom orders on these. 

I have a red one planned next, I'll keep you posted and I may even remember to take some progress shots!

Improv Quilting

At the last London Modern Quilt Guild meeting Shevvy talked to us about Improv Quilting. When quilting this is how I like to work, I like to make things up as I go along, swap and change things around and be led by the fabric and colours rather than make several identical blocks. I like to have movement within a quilt, to have different piecing throughout and I love the appearance of a random layout, though this actually takes a lot of thought and playing around.

I'm working on this Improv Quilt at the moment, I used only red, bright pink and white fabrics and tried to keep it simple and random. It just needs binding so hopefully I'll be able to show it to you soon.

The quilters that inspire me the most are the ones that have their own style and put together quilts in an original and interesting way. Ashley at Film In The Fridge is one of my favourite quilters, her quilts are all so different and she has a wonderful way of using colour and creating interesting designs with fabric.

This one, Cascading Pools has a wonderful balance of colour and neutral spaces. Have a look at her blog, you'll be inspired.

Lu Summers is another inspiration when it comes to improv quilts, her book Quilt Improv is packed with blocks, tips and inspiration to get you started. Remember this one? It's one of my favourite quilts.

I've put together a mosaic of some Improv quilts that are inspiring. I think I'm going to have to try some improv curves, these ones look so good!

Click on the links to see who made these -

1. Assembly, 2. Improv. Blocks, 3. improv curve mini quilt, 4. wool improv quilt, 5. Keeping Eden, 6. add a border plus plus, 7. "Up Down" Quilt with Facing Finish - Detail, 8. Improv / free form quilt block number 5, 9. Quiet improv quilt

Shevvy talked about how some of her Improv quilts have grown from the desire to use up her scraps, tiny as many of them are. Shevvy pieces them together, sometimes chops them up again, mixes them with solids and plays around with colour and design until she's got a quilt she's happy with, there are many examples on her Flickr page. I got a bundle of her tiny triangle scraps at the last meeting and my challenge was to make a block with them.

This is what I came up with, I tried not to overthink it and just added a few rectangles to these tiny triangles that were mostly pieced together. I'm not mad about the finished block, it's too busy for my taste, but I absolutely loved the process and trying something new. 

Voyage Quilt

Before I dashed off on summer adventures with the family I finished this quilt, 'Voyage'.

I'm super thrilled with this one, the coloured panels are handprinted with my designs and the background fabric is Eclectic Elements, 'Documentaion' by Tim Holtz, a wonderful print of old receipts, travel documents, tickets etc 

I added curved corners to the coloured rectangles, I love the softness it brings to the design, these was easier to sew than I had expected too.

  

The quilting is mostly straight(ish) lines by machine. I couldn't resist doing a few extra lines by hand with perle thread, using colours to compliment the rectangles. If I had more time I would hand quilt all my quilts, it adds such great depth to the finish.

I had a deadline looming though (always the way), I made this quilt as my contribution to the London Modern Quilt Guild's stand at the Festival Of Quilts this August. 

It was so exciting to see it there, alongside so many inspiring quilts. It was a wonderful opportunity to have a really good look at fellow members quilts too, there was such diversity within our stand.

I am filled with enthusiasm and lots of ideas for new quilts, though I am reminding myself that I still haven't finished the two quilts I started for my girls last September. One of them is three quarters quilted, the other still to be basted... and Winter is coming. I am going to have to hold back and crack on with these before I start something new, or at least that is the plan. 

Michael Miller Challenge

I've finished two, yes two quilts in the last week! Nothing like deadlines to get me moving. 

This one is the Michael Miller Modern Quilt Guild challenge. We were given the printed fabric and you can make anything, as long as it's quilted. 

I have been playing with curves lately and thought it would be fun to see if I could insert the printed fabric into a hole in the solid grey. Turns out I could, and I like this a lot, so I expect you'll see more that are very similar soon(ish).

I love the simplicity of this, though I probably could have been more adventurous with the quilting. I find deciding how to quilt something the hardest part.

So this has been my creative space lately, lots of finishing. It feels good! 

a tale of two quilts

Last September I started to plan a quilt each for my girls. I asked them separately to choose one fabric from my stash and I would plan a quilt around their choice. Remarkably they each chose the same fabric in different colourways, this Kaffe Fasset design Tile Flower. 

I decided on a simple square design and I used colours to complement their fabric choice. I wanted to include lots of fabric I had printed and slowly built up enough in a range of colours to make two single bed sized quilts. 

I gave the girls three blank squares each and some fabric pens and let them draw or write whatever they wanted to capture their 6 and 8 year old selves in these quilts. 

Missy Big did a self portrait, a drawing of her sister, her favourite teddy and doll and a heart.

Little Missy put all her favourites in one square, bunnies, a rainbow, butterflies and all our ages, in another a heart and the other one is a crazy ramble of jumbled words and numbers, which sums up her active mind and jump before looking attitude perfectly.

These squares make my heart ship a beat when I look at them.

I'm hand quilting these, so it's slow but happy progress. I'm using perle thread in a bunch of cheery colours and wiggling lines across the quilt.

I am loving making these, but I can hardly wait to see them being snuggled under, used to make dens and dragged across the floor like I didn't spend a gazillion hours making them.

Throughout the process of making these I made a new friend in the school playground. She was so inspired by all my quilt talk she made her first quilt for her Mum, a double sized quilt, in about a month and took it to her in South Africa over Christmas. 
We had lots of frantic "how do I do..." chats at pick up time and somehow she got this finished in time, I'm so impressed! There are two embroidered hand shapes and a drawing by each of her children in this. Needless to say her parents were thrilled.  

Stunning isn't it! I love her almost 3 year olds contribution. She most definitely has the quilting bug now and is planning her next quilt(s). 

Linking in with My Creative Space, so glad to see this back again, I missed it so!

imagine

A few weeks ago I was contacted by Naomi, editor at Japanese magazine Patchwork Tsushin. The magazine is doing a feature on Modern Quilting and Naomi was coming to London to meet Kaffe Fassett at his home and to see his exhibition. Whilst here she wanted to come and meet me, with a photographer and to talk about my handprinted fabrics and modern quilting. 

I was thrilled, excited and slightly panicked all at the same time. I don't have many quilts. Though I do have a lot of prints, the result was my juicy cubes quilt. I also finished off these mini quilts.

I love text on fabrics and printed this wonderful quote by Pablo Picasso onto a pintucked mini.

This scraptastic mini started way back in September and is tiny scraps from dresses and projects I've made for the girls. 

I was super nervous on the day that Naomi and Hugh (the photographer) came, but I need not have worried. Naomi was lovely and very interested to discover how my quilting and printing journey have developed together. 

I showed Naomi my very first pieces of printed fabric, created using everyday items such as corks, empty spools and blocks of foam. We discussed screen printing and how I got started after a workshop with Lucie Summers and I showed her the stencils and screens I am currently using to create my fabrics and the objects and forms that inspire me. 

Naomi had sent me a copy of the magazine before she came to London, my goodness it is lovely. I wasn't familiar with it at all, and despite not being able to read Japanese it's a fascinating read. There are lots of picture tutorials I'm quite sure I could follow, and of course lots of stunning quilts.

Before they left we exchanged gifts, I gave a bundle of my handprinted fabrics and Naomi gave me a gorgeous and beautifully packaged Japanese handkerchief. 

I can hardly wait to see the magazine, which isn't out until the end of the year. 

But now I have no WIP's lurking about, time to start something new I think.

hand printed, hand quilted

I've had my head down and been beavering away lately, you know I'm not a speedy quilter, so I'm really chuffed to have finished  this one recently.

I'm really excited by this quilt, as it is my first one using fabrics I have screen printed myself. I love a juicy solid colour and thought these prints and solids really complimented each other.

I went for a simple design and used a printed square, within a solid square. I'm calling this one Juicy Cubes.

The back is strips of prints and solids on a mostly plain pale grey back.

Hand quilted in cotton perle.

I love this so much! 

There's so much more to share, I'm going to try and do a bit of a catch over then next couple of weeks. x  

finished

I finished this a couple of weeks ago and I'm so pleased with how it has turned out.

After much agonising over how to quilt it, I just followed the zigzag created by the triangles and quilted it in yellow, which really stands out on the back.

It was my intention to give this to a charity, it's a little too small for the Siblings Together project (it measures 105 x 114cm), so let me know if there is a shout out for quilts somewhere.

I'm in printing mode at the moment, lots to show you soon...

Take a peek at what's going in other creative spaces.

A bit slow on the uptake, but blindly following the crowd and jumping on the Bloglovin bandwagon.... join me? 

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It seems wrong to post without a picture, so here we go. I basted  this last week and it's now quilted and half bound, will show it off soon...

something different

My blogging these days is very erratic, I'm going to stop apologising for it. 

I have done a little sewing though. I made some bunting for Annie a while ago and I didn't know what to do with the leftovers (I got carried away with cutting triangles).

Simpatico is a really modern print, though not my usual style. So I've pieced the traingles together and this will become a charity quilt, not sure where it's going yet, but I hope it will bring someone some comfort when it's finished.

I love how it's turning out, it's so good to be out of my comfort zone too, it has shown me some many other options. 

The strips in the top picture will be the binding. If you love the fabric, you can still get some here.

Check out some other creative spaces here.

a finish

I made an effort this week to finish of my Hexie cushion. You know what, after going through that "I hate it, I love it, I hate it" performance...

Now it's finished I actually love it! 

Particularly fond of the back. 

Linking up with WIP Wednesday, I'd love to say I have another quilty something on the go, but I don't. 

There are one or two lurking in my head though, maybe after Christmas...