Blog Archives

Quilting Arts Challenge: In the Garden

29/5/2014

Quilting Arts Magazine June/July 2014

The latest edition of Quilting Arts magazine is now out and I am very pleased to have a small quilt that was accepted for the challenge 'In the Garden' included.

For a change I thought I would share the process I went through whilst making this quilt. Here is my description of 'How to grow a quilt';

I often start my quilts in this way, making small studies or samples by experimenting with different scraps of fabric. For this quilt I started with the idea of using hexagons, taking my inspiration from traditional Grandmother's Garden quilts that use papers and the English paper piecing technique.

I looked through my scrap basket and found a selection of small floral prints that might work, attached some fusible to the back and cut out a selection of small hexagons.

Starting with hexagons, I played about with the layout on different backgrounds. The yellow and purple were an obvious choice, but I wanted to try out other ideas to be sure.

To add more interest and make the eye move around the quilt I experimented with adding some thin strips of fabric behind the hexagons. I tried out different thicknesses, colours and positions.

Adding more interest to the background fabric I used a few lino cut stamps I had used for another project and hand stitched the strips down with some thick contrasting thread.
I also found an old book and carefully tore out garden type words and sprinkled them over the quilt.

Next the hexagons needed stitching down. I tried straight stitches and a curly free motion stitch, which I thought looked much nicer - so I continued with that. A bit of sparkly thread also filled in the centers of two flowers nicely.

As it was starting to look quite full now I decided to add some of the quilting. I wanted both hand and machine quilting - so I started in the top left with some straight lines, quite close together, to compress the quilt in this area.

The quilt was filling out nicely, but the centres of the flowers were still a little empty. I wanted something more than just the sparkly thread I added earlier, so I thought of buttons.... but which colour???

Brown, blue, white, pink, orange...... I settled for red which I thought had more pop.

Lastly the remaining empty space needed to be hand quilted using the same thick thread as earlier.

To finish off the raw edges I simply satin stitched all around about 3 or 4 times. As I had worked right up to the edge of the fabric I had no other real choice - something to think of next time!!

So that is how I grew the quilt. It was very much a case of trying out different ideas, seeing what looked good and what did not, then thinking about 'what next'.

I often work in this way, with only a sketchy idea of how the work may look when it is finished, and I quite like that. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't - but that, for me, is the fun.

Thanks for sharing in my development of this quilt.

An afternoon in the garden

20/5/2014

The sun is out and it is time to be outside. I need green fabric, and lots of it for my new series. Time to get out the pots, buckets and dye and have a big dye fest.

My new series for the UK will be based on the chalk hill figures of Wiltshire, more specifically, the white horses carved into the landscape around my UK home. You can find out more about them here http://www.wiltshirewhitehorses.org.uk/

The White Horse at Westbury - the oldest of the Wiltshire horses

The White Horse at Cherhill

Radstock Museum Patchwork and Quilting Exhibition

11/5/2014

Midsomer Quilting's Fourth Exhibition

The bi-annual exhibition of amazing quilts is at Radstock Museum once again, thanks to the dedication and commitment of the owners of Midsomer Quilting, I made my first visit to this year's exhibition last week and was so impressed at the scale and variety of the beautiful work on display - in fact there are over 200 items to see. Chris and Brigitta Howell and De Pickford support their customers by organising this amazing exhibition which is hosted by Radstock Museum. The variety and quality of quilts is quite outstanding - if you haven not been yet, go soon - there is not much time left!

The exhibition has been running since February and continues to 31 May 2014

Quilting Arts Challenge: In the Garden

Quilting Arts Magazine June/July 2014

An afternoon in the garden

Radstock Museum Patchwork and Quilting Exhibition

Midsomer Quilting's Fourth Exhibition

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