Bold and Beautiful

A few years ago Jane gifted me the flimsy for this gorgeous quilt to celebrate a milestone birthday. It's bold, it's beautiful and I can't believe that it's mine! Since then, it has hung in the laundry room waiting for the perfect backing. Yup, for almost three years. I'm going to blame it on the pandemic. 

I was aiming for a gold and, despite having a healthy supply of yellows, there was nothing in my stash to suit; the few online purchases that I made just missed the mark so I decided that I needed to take it with me to a shop to be able to better gauge what would work. And so it sat, until a few weeks ago. 

I headed to the lake for a bit of R&R and Jane had suggested that she might have a gold that would work. She wasn't wrong. It was perfect! Those tiny birds and butterflies set amongst the vines seemed a lovely fit for the bright pinks and oranges.

The frothy Hyacinth Grande panto that Roberta suggested works beautifully (this pic is a little on the dark side; the colours in the photo above are truer).

It is a wonderful riot of seemingly randomly placed saturated pinks, oranges and corals...

...and the odd hit of fuchsia and purple. I think that these dots might be my favourite; sadly, I cannot find any to purchase.

Many of the prints are Kaffe's, as is the pattern. I'm not sure what it is called but it is from one of his older books. I'll have to check my books to see if I can find it.

So, what to do for a binding? I landed on a muddy green - it is a nice foil to the heat of the colours and works well with the backing too. Surprisingly, I had two greens to choose from but there wasn't enough of the second option. In the end, I think that this was the better choice - the first one was brighter. It was a real treat to spend some time hand stitching the binding on this one.

We are enjoying it as a throw in the living room so I get to see it all the time.

To say that I absolutely love it is an understatement. Thank you again Jane - this is a real treasure (BTW, it's perfect to enjoy a snooze under!).....M

Laying the Foundation

Jane is never far from starting a new quilt and her latest doesn't disappoint. She has worked through her collection of neutrals that she bought at Quilt Canada when it was in Ottawa last year and her Kaffe fabrics and has a solid foundation for a new Log Cabin quilt in the works. It. Is. Spectacular.

I mean really, with this gorgeous collection of prints how could it not be?

She didn't start that long ago but you wouldn't know it from the pile of blocks that I saw. 

In the back of her mind she thought that there might be close to 60 blocks made but I did a quick count and came up with 74. Now I believe that there are over 80.

Like the majority of her quilts she pieces them by hand, and for this one she works on three at a time.

Initially she had all of her 1.5" strips tossed into a bag and would dig through to find the ones that she needed, but that quickly became a frustrating mess. So she sorted them by colour and pinned each group with a large safety pin, both coloured...

and neutral. So much easier to work with the bundles.

She's played with lots of different layouts and is leaning to diagonal stripes. The final decision has yet to be made.

Either way, she's having a grand time playing with all of this gorgeous colour. Wouldn't you?....M

Surprise and Delight

Last weekend while celebrating Canada Day out at the lake we also celebrated a bit of a milestone birthday of mine and I just had to share Jane's gift with you. It's this gorgeous, lush, Kaffe-inspired beauty. All that saturated colour in such fabulous prints - LUV!!! Talk about surprise and delight!

We couldn't remember how long ago she made this flimsy but every time that I've seen it through the years it has just left me weak-kneed. Well, all of that gushing finally paid off! 😉

It is just the right size to use as a throw in our living room so now my challenge is to find the perfect backing and get it quilted.

I simply cannot believe that it is mine. All that coral and pink and periwinkle in one place, well, it leaves me speechless. I'm not sure that I'll be able to nap under it very well though - I'll be spending all of my time pouring over all of the fantastic prints that she used.

This periwinkle is one of my faves and not one that I have been able to find for sale. How can you not love all those funky dots? And that colour?

Of course I had to get a photo of the talented maker and I wrapped up in that amazing sea of colour.

Even Baylea in her matching collar got her picture taken with it (almost makes you wonder if she didn't know what was coming...). This is a gift that will be cherished for years to come. Thank you again, Jane.

And today's mail brought me this - a beautiful hand-crafted card from my sister Dori.

The block is stitched to the card so after I have enjoyed it for a while I plan to carefully remove the block and work it into one of my projects. Again, more spectacular fabrics....M

Do I Hear 'Three'?

YES! Unbelievably, I have finished a third quilt this month and it is another one that needs to be carbon dated to figure out just how old it is. I'm guessing close to 20 years in the making.

Kaffe Fassett's Blue Diamonds is truly one that I thought I would never finish; just pack it up and hand it off to someone else was a real possibility at one several points.

I started this one before we moved to this house, and we've been here for 14 years, so you do the math. It was half sewn together before the move but I struggled to get good joins at the corners so I'd stop work on it more than I would pick it up.

Needless to say, it wasn't the first thing that I unpacked when we moved, staying hidden in a TO DO bin until I set up my sewing room a couple of years later. Last year I decided to finally finish the top and then this spring sent it off to be quilted. By this time there was no love lost between it and me so I was fully prepared to use it as a charity quilt.

Once it was quilted though it was a different story. Suddenly it had texture that took some of the pressure off of perfect points and blended the fabrics into a cozy collection. And that pieced backing that I also grumped about seems to have worked out perfectly.

Roberta used a pretty pattern with a butterfly motif to compliment all of the florals and a delicate blue thread to quilt it.

The Official Cookie Tester has taken a real shine to it too and says that it has a very French feel; I tend to agree. I remember having a difficult time finding enough different blue and pink large florals to use in it so there are some rows that are a little scrappier than others to make it work.

And the scrappy doesn't end there. The pink and blue striped setting triangles around the edge just make me smile. They are the real 'make do' part of the quilt, the blue coming from an old shirt and the pink was once my nightshirt.

Not only do I like the inclusion of the stripes, I like how they work with the florals. I couldn't resist placing one or two on an angle for more interest.

This fabric with the red cabbage roses and daisies is by far my fave, in part because I didn't have a lot of it,

and this cream cabbage rose that I've used around the border isn't very far behind.

The bright, geometric binding is fun too.

So, at the end of the day I guess the moral of the story is not to second guess a WIP until you see the finished product. It always seems to come together in the end....M

Backing Things Up

Making quilt backings is probably my least favourite part of the process and can be attested to by the fact that the materials to back my Blue Diamonds - a Kaffe Fassett design - has been sitting on the back of this chair for a few months now. Yes, I said months!

And it's not like that chair is somewhere that I never see it - it's sitting in my kitchen so I see it every day. Sheesh.

It probably didn't help things knowing that it was going to be a pieced back. I found a great piece of pink for it a while back but it wasn't nearly enough so I decided it was a good opportunity to use up whatever bits and pieces of the fabrics that I had used in it.

Finally the spirit moved me but it still took me several hours to get it all together.

I was going to use two large pieces of the pink in the layout but decided at the last minute to save the second piece for the binding, so then the hunt was on to find a replacement. I have more fabric for backings than I care to admit, so with all those blues you would think that shouldn't have been a huge ask, but it turned out to be. Eventually I fournd a combo that would work - I'm not totally over the moon with it, but it works.

So now it's together, but I'm already wondering if the layout works with the front. Guess I'll just have to see what it looks like after it's quilted....M

Backing Up

There's a pile of quilt tops sitting on a chair outside my sewing room and this year I'm attempting to move them along and get several of them finished, so I pulled my Kaffe Fassett Blue Diamonds from the pile and had a chat with Roberta to see if she had a suitable backing (despite having a pretty significant stack of backings - I dare not say how many - there was nothing in my stash that would do the trick).

We found one that would do in a pinch, but it wasn't really doing the quilt justice so I decided to keep looking. Well, I think I struck pay dirt. I happened upon a great little geometric pink print and got about 4.5 metres of it for - get this - $3/metre! Bingo!

I wasn't convinced that it was going to be a big enough piece, and it isn't, but at that price there was enough to make a very good start on a pieced backing. So, back into the sewing room I went and voila - another pink print, a small piece of blue (that's a VIP print that has been around forever), a deep turquoise and a teal/green that I brought back from Beijing a few years ago. Perfect.

So, everything is washed and ironed and now I need to start laying out some options. Hopefully soon it will be ready to take back to Roberta for quilting....M

And Now For Something Completely Different...

This pillow top has been sitting on a chair in the sewing room for a couple of months now and I thought I'd share it with you so that you can have a break from Danuta's Garden and nine-patch blocks for a bit.

In need of a colour fix, I made it right after I finished with the subtle tones of Sea Glass, digging into a pile of fabrics that I've been setting aside for a Fruit Salad quilt, and this was the result.

Pillows can be quite cathartic for the frenetic side of my quilting personality - you know, the side of you that wants to make everything that they see and do it now. I like seeing the mini quilts that others make but the practical side of me wants something more functional when all is said and done, and a pillow fits the bill.











It's a great you to play with fabrics that you've been looking at out of the corner of your eye, or trying a new technique, and (in theory) you have a finished project much faster than it takes to finish a quilt.













Of course the fact that this pillow top has been sitting unfinished for a few months sort of blows that last piece of logic to bits, but finishing them quickly can be done :). I got stuck at what to use for backing, but if I really set my mind to it I'm thinking that there is something in my stash that will work. Ya think?!

It's very simply machine quilted, and I stitched the top directly to the batting. Every time I do this I'm convinced that the batting will totally gum up the bobbin casing of my machine, but it's a low pile batt and worked beautifully.

At 20" square it's nice and large - but I think I'm going to have to do a little surgery on the corners because, once again, the filling doesn't fill them. Who's in charge of quality control anyway?...M