Simple, Modern, Rooted in Tradition

I just finished this quilt. I love it. I think it sums up what I'm about.

Simple

Modern

But Rooted in the Traditions of Quilting.

 This is a pattern I doodled back in the spring. Its loosely based on the many traditional applique patterns that you see in Baltimore album quilts from the mid 19th century

Google 'Baltimore Album Quilt' in images and it will blow your mind. These were serious show pieces made by women with the time to show off in those days, not designed to ever get sat on or slept under mind you! Whenever I look at images of these quilts they look so modern to me, especially the simpler less 'look at me' ones. I wanted to make an applique block quilt, but make it modern. I hope you like it.

It kind of sparked a creative explosion in me and I just kept having to 'reinterprete' more traditional blocks from Baltimore to the Amish(!) - the result became my Modern Applique Sampler Quilt which I will teach as a class after Xmas.I hope some of you fancy quilting along with me on that one to make your own modern 'look at me' quilt!

Spring 2013 Classes Now Online

Check out the tab Spring Classes 2013 to join me if you would like to make this Modern Applique quilt your 2013 project. I will be taking some more lovely photos of this quilt ( when i can rope in some volunteers with stronger arms than my poor kids!) to share with you more of the detail of each fun block. I have loved designing and making this quilt, I hope you will too. Its styled on the traditional elaborate Applique quilts from the 1850's, taking inspiration from folk art, Amish quilts and a dash of the 1950's - but made modern! This one really would make a future heirloom, the pace is slow and steady, 9 classes over 7 months to quilt along with a group as we each make our own unique version.

If you missed out on the Autumn Simple Sampler classes I will be running this popular class again in the Spring, sign up early it's already booking.

New for 2013 I also have a Quilting for Baby class which I am very excited about as my first quilts were driven by my desire to make things for my babies. I found quilting the perfect project to combine with new babies as its so pick-up-and-put-downable! I know there's lots of lovely Grannies-to-be out there too who would love this class - it's Short and Sweet, Plain and Simple - come along and see for yourself!

Late Summer Sewing

I love this time of year. The final lingering of summer warmth with just that nip in the air and the unmistakable smell of autumn creeping in. I confess I do love autumn and early winter, the cosy thoughts of fires and long evenings. It helps being a lover of craft, winter evenings offer the promise of unlimited indulgent knitting and quilting. Today I had a million things to do, but I decided I would give myself over to a little bit of squirrelly preparation for the winter ahead!

I had been wanting for ages to make a set of lid warmers (?is that what they are called?) for the cosy Rayburn (Mrs HotBottom as she's known in our house).You can buy white quilted versions for the round lids of agas at the posh shop nearby for an extortionate amount, but as a committed lover of all things patchworky, plain white ones weren't going to cut the mustard with me whatever the price.

I had in mind a plan for some scandi-mid century Rayburn warmers and the idea had been bubbling away for the summer just awaiting the autumn urge to make them a reality. Inspired by my favourite tea towel I decided to go with the sardine shape, in blues to match my kitchen, on an oatmealy linen background with the backs lined with a cut up old towel.The bright pink one wriggled its way in there as it was all looking a bit too tasteful understated and Wedgwood blue!

I appliqued the fish to the linen backing, bulked up the pads with two layers of standard cotton batting and the towel as the backing. I machine quilted around each fish then bound them with a standard double fold binding, looped at one corner to make a hanging loop. I was really rather pleased with them, you cant beat a bit of feelgood 'fun' sewing on a whim!

However now that long list of preparation for my autumn classes is calling me so I'm off to my sewing room to work on some lovely samples of the class blocks that I am working up, and to put the final finishing touches to the Advanced Applique Quilt for my class in the new year which is almost ready for its ta dah! moment on the blog, bye for now and enjoy this weather while it lasts!

The House Quilt

This quilt came about after I saw a similar quilt at the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham a couple of years ago. That quilt used a regular sized house repeated in the middle of an all white block, made in different solid fabrics, then heavily machine quilted. I just loved how wonderfully spare it all was, so simple but so much texture. Mine differs in that I got a bit carried away after the first little box house and so I started playing with all of the house shapes that you might have ever drawn as a child. I used a tight colour palate but added in some patterned fabrics, stripes etc for variation ( I definitely lack the discipline of the true minimalist!)
I asked my kids to draw me their dream houses, they drew toadstools and wigwams, It includes all of the houses we've lived in. It was all wonky pieced out of scraps. It was a lot of fun to make. I quilted circles to break up the geometry, I backed it with a little square of each colour in the middle of each block back. I could have kept going and going with this one, but decided to stop at village sized, but wouldn't a long city vista pieced this way look fab? The London skyline anyone, I'm sure its been done?

I Heart Holidays!

This quilt is the ultimate homage to holidays and ice cream! Perfect combination, no? We have a favourite family holiday spot in France, and in perfectly chic french style the local icecream shop has the MOST divine artwork! On a cool coffee cream background are geometrically arranged icecream cones in the most chic of colour combinations. For two years I marvelled ( and ate icecream!), after the third year I decided it had to be a quilt! Now this was a real labour of love as it involved more than 20 carefully picked colours from the Robert Kaufman Kona Cotton range ( for those of you new to quilting Kona cottons are the ultimate when it comes to finding just the perfect shade of any colour, they offer over 200 different solid colour fabrics and you can select the colours using a super duper fold out colour chart that are most sort after by serious quilters! ( he he, I NEVER lend mine out!))There then followed a LOT of careful drafting of patterns and layouts as their artwork uses a complicated repeat so it looks like there is even more variation than there is! It was a maths challenge! I then appliqued each icecream to its 'brick' in the grid, there was an anguished sewing together marathon ( 'Please kids don't move any of them!'). I quilted around each cone and also quilted shadows of each cone in the plain section at the top of the quilt. Then on the back added my little message to my holiday paradise, check it out if you ever get the chance - oh and make sure you get an icecream while you're there!

Summer Sewing

Well this little blog has been a bit empty of new quilty pictures this summer but that doesn't mean I've not been sewing! I managed to twist my ankle down a rabbit hole on a dog walk on the glorious morning of the first day of the summer holidays and have spent the last 4 weeks in various casts and splints hobbling around! Now sadly that's meant that the computer ( upstairs) has been very neglected, hence the lack of quilty piccies, but it does mean that 4 weeks of foot up rest has been very productive for my quilt output! Ive spent the summer mostly finishing up various projects and i have managed to put a nice dent into the stack of quilt tops awaiting hand quilting! This one I call my Taj Mahal Quilt. Its very bright for me, but was a real push outside of my comfort zone colourwise. Its supposed to be a kind of Slumdog Millionaire/Mathew Williamson inspired hot summer quilt, doesn't it look fab in amongst the lush summer greens of the daylillies?

The fabric is Amy Butler, from the Soul Blossoms Range ( with a bit of Kaffe Fasset too), which you can still get hold of ( its a couple of years old), if not her latest range called Lark is starting to be available in the UK now and is very similar in vibe. I bought a fat quarter bundle with the plan to make bunting originally. It makes knockout bunting by the way - I have strings of it zig zagging my covered porch area outside the back door. I loved it so much I figured I needed to make a quilt too. I made the pattern up as i went along. I used shapes found in Indian and Moorish architecture and appliqued the blocks first. When i started out i was a bit scared of how MUCH pattern there was, so i separated them by using the solid colour backgrounds, but then i got more comfortable with it and I decided on the lush border using small squares on point as it kind of reminded me of a tiled floor? This is a definite example where you have to jump in with both feet and embrace the riot of patchwork! I wasn't sure I would love it to begin with but I really do, its such a perfect summery quilt, I figured you'd enjoy sharing it here.

Modern Applique for 2013

I thought you'd enjoy a little sneak peak of one of the projects I am working on at the moment. Its such a sunny summery set of fabrics and the sun finally broke through today (at last!) so I couldnt resist hanging these blocks up in a tree and enjoying them. These blocks are applique, and will form the basis of a course I will teach in 2013 called modern applique, you can check out the link here for more details if you think you'll fancy some summery cheering up in January!