Kaffe Fassett Patchwork Cushions

Here's some patchwork cushions I made from Kaffe Fassett fabrics.

English Paper Pieced Hexagons cushion

I used English paper piecing for the hexagons, and machine piecing for the Dresden Plate below.

Dresden Plate cushion

I didn't really have a pattern for these. I'd seem similar designs on the internet and just made my own patterns to fit my cushions. I hand sewed the patchwork onto the pink backgrounds once they were finished. Here's a close up of the fabrics. They're a couple of years old now, and I don't think they're widely available anymore.

They certainly brighten up my room on dull days!

I'll be linking up with:
Sew Cute Tuesday at Blossom Heart Quilts
WOW at Esther Liu Quilts 
Needle N Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation.

Voting now open in the Pantone Radiant Orchid challenge

Entries have closed, and public voting is now open in the Pantone Challenge.

My Pantone Challenge quilt entry

There are 3 categories - large quilts, mini quilts and quilt tops only. The top three quilts in each category will be decided by judges, but there's also a viewers' choice which is open for voting now. (not sure when voting closes, but winners will be announced on Wednesday 26 March, so it's only open for a few days.)

All you have to do is to visit the Pantone Challenge website and click on the little heart in the top right hand corner of the link to your favourite quilt. Of course I'd be delighted if you voted for mine (which is number 4 in the quilts category). However there are so many other lovely quilts there you'll have a hard decision deciding who to vote for.

Remember it's just one vote per category. Have fun looking at all the Radiant Orchid quilts.

Your Place or Mine? - month 6

I've finished month 6 of the 'Your Place or Mine?' block of the month now. It features some terraced houses, a fishing boat and some row boats.  There's also a lovely big shady tree and some pretty flowers in the gardens.

Your Place or Mine? month 6

I've spent most of the weekend attaching months 3, 4, 5,and 6 to the centre square and putting the border of half square triangles on. The half square triangles required a few adjustments to make them fit. Fortunately all four sides were longer than I needed, so I just did a few extra seams here and there to made the borders shorter.

months 1 to 6 put together

 So, onto month 7 now which contains a lot of flowers and a llama! I'm looking forward to it.

Lots of people have asked where I got this BOM from. It's from Material Obsession in Sydney. Wendy Williams designed this as a block of the month, but sadly the program is currently sold out and closed. They might sell the patterns once the BOM has finished in July.

I'll be linking up with Sew Cute Tuesday at Blossom Heart Quilts, WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced and Needle N Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation.

2014 Pantone Quilt Challenge: Radiant Orchid - My finished quilt.

I've finished my Pantone Quilt Challenge quilt and here it is. It's a hand quilted lap quilt measuring 52" by 52". I'll use it every night in the winter when I'm watching TV and stitching.

Kitchen Window in Radiant Orchid

Kitchen Window

The back pieced from fabrics used on the quilt top

When I first read about the Pantone Quilt Challenge, I thought, 'I'd like to try that'. 
I think it's the colour that drew me in. If it had been mustard or brown I wouldn't have been at all interested. But purple! Count me in. 

I din't know what I was going to make initially, but I had been browsing through some modern quilting books and had seen some interesting designs. Before I'd even settled on a design I started shopping for fabrics.

Pristine Poppy in Magenta

I went shopping at my local quilt shop Nancy's, and the first fabric that I liked for the challenge was from  Joel Dewberry's Notting Hill range - Pristine Poppy in magenta.  I snapped that up and some complimentary solids (which have ended up on the back rather than the front).

Having decided on my feature fabric, it was time to settle on a pattern. I chose Kitchen Window by Elizabeth Hartman, from her book The Practical Guide to Patchwork: New Basics for the Modern Quiltmaker. I'm really pleased that I chose that pattern because it's certainly highlighted the feature fabrics and left plenty of space for the purple sashing.

Kitchen Window

I knew that I needed some more fabrics to fill in the windows, and some darker sashing for the edges of the windows, so I visited Stitchbird (also in Wellington) and that's where I found the orange and the pink spots.

I looked up Joel Dewberry's range online, and saw the Primrose and Hourglass fabrics from the Notting Hill range. I ordered a fat quarter of each of them, thinking that they would work well too.

Finally I got the purple spot at Piece by Piece, another quilt shop in Wellington.

To complete my round trip of all the quilting shops in Wellington, I went back to Nancy's and got the dark purple for the window sashing, and Pepper Cory's purple solid for the borders and sashing.

I hand quilted in the ditch with regular quilting cotton, but I also quilted some diagonal lines across the whole quilt in Perle 8 to add interest.

I've really enjoyed this challenge and I'm really pleased with my quilt.Thank you to the organisers - Adrianne from On the Windy Side and Anne from Playcrafts.

You can see many more Radiant Orchid quilts on the Flickr page.

I'll be linking up everywhere with this one:
Sew Cute Tuesday with Blossom Heart Quilts
WOW with Esther
Needle n  Thread Thursday with Kelly
Finish it up Friday with Crazy mom Quilts
Can I get a Whoop Whoop with Confessions of a Fabric Addict

The facts:

The pattern is Kitchen Window by Elizabeth Hartman, from her book The Practical Guide to Patchwork: New Basics for the Modern Quiltmaker.

The feature fabric is from Joel Dewberry's Notting Hill range - Pristine Poppy in magenta. I've also included two other fabrics from that range - Primrose in magenta and Hourglass in tangerine.

The sashing and border fabric is a shot cotton by Pepper Cory.

The finished quilt measures 52" x 52".

Ebb Tide Canvas work

A lot of people left lovely comments on my last post about canvas work. Here's another canvas work piece that I made a couple of years ago. It's called 'Ebb Tide' and it's by Linda Lachance of Northern Pine Designs in Canada.

Ebb Tide

My mum purchased the pattern for me in New Zealand, but not all of the threads were available here, so we made some substitutions.  The original pattern is in darker blues, purples and greens, but I chose these lighter colours. You can see the original colours on their website here.

Rhodes stitches in green

Looking back at the pattern now, I made a lot of pencil notes to myself as I was stitching this. This design was more difficult than others that I've done. The large Rhodes stitches are rectangular rather than the usual squares or diamonds. They were particularly challenging to get right, but thinking about it now, I should have marked out each area with normal sewing cotton before I started stitching the Rhodes stitch. Ahh, the tricks you learn along the way!

The threads I used were:

Kreinki for the dark green metallic sections

DMC satin for the purple (5552) and mauve (5211) sections

DMC Jewel Effects (E155)

ColourStreams Ophir 16 Seascape for the yellow, purple, blue sections

Threadworx Overdyed floss 1053 for the green variegated Rhodes stitches

and some beads to finish it off, of course.

This piece sat unframed for a couple of years, but I found a very good framer last year and they always come up with great framing suggestions. I'm really pleased with the purple mounting and the brushed silver frame. 

I also have the Blue Bayou pattern by Linda Lachance but haven't done it yet. Maybe one day!