La Passacaglia - a trip down memory lane

 This week I've been reminded about the fun I had making my la Passacaglia quilt.  

Tula Pink did a little video earlier this week about her la Passacaglia quilt, and it got me thinking about mine again.  You can watch Tula's video about her quilt here: 

https://www.facebook.com/tulapink/videos/309154120366478/

  

I still love my quilt, and I use it on our bed sometimes.  I also take it to show other quilters when I get invited to speak at other guilds.  

It wasn't Tula Pink that inspired me to start my quilt, but rather two other quilters that I stumbled across online.  One of them was Sharon of Lilabelle Lane Creations in Australia.  Sharon is a big Tula fan, and she was inspired to make her own la Passacaglia after seeing photos of Tula's la Passacaglia.    

I got to meet Sharon and Willyne Hammerstein in Melbourne, Australia back in 2018.  It was lovely to all meet up at AQC. 

I started planning my la Passacaglia quilt back in late 2014.  I got the Millefiori Quilts book by Willyne Hammerstien for Christmas in 2014, and I immediately launched into it. 

I chose Kaffe Fasset's Millefiori fabric in blue as my inspiration fabric, and from that I chose these fabrics as my starting point.  

As you can see from my finished quilt, I didn't use all of these fabrics, and I introduced plenty of other fabrics.  I just let the colour scheme evolve as I went along.  The most important thing was balance, so if it needed more green or yellow, I added more green or yellow.  

It took just on one year for me to finish English Paper Piecing my quilt top.  I was thrilled when it was all joined up and I could finally hold it up. 

I wanted borders, and fortunately I had seen some wonderful border fabric, so I tracked it down and very carefully applied my borders.  You can read about how I added my borders, and all other aspects of my quilt, on the la Passacaglia tab at the top of my blog.  

While I was making my quilt my mum got interested too, so she made her very own version of la passacaglia.  

It was fun comparing progress when we met up.

Mum's quilt was one of the ones selected to go to Houston for the QuiltMania exhibition.  It hung with 19 other quilts, including Tula Pink's enlarged version.  And then mum's quilt was selected to go on to another exhibition in Nantes, France too!

My quilt wasn't selected to go to Houston, but I was super thrilled when it won the top amateur award at the QuiltNSW Sydney Quilt Show in 2017. I think that award was even better than it going to Houston, because the quilts weren't judged in Houston - they were for exhibition only.  In Sydney I was surrounded by friends, both from NZ and Australia, and I had the most wonderful time with so many people congratulating me and telling me they loved my quilt. 

Thanks to Tula Pink finding Willyne's book and making her la Passacaglia quilt, Millefiori Quilts has become very popular and Willyne has now written four books.  I own them all and have lots of plans for more quilts yet.  

Although Willyne hand pieces all her quilts, you can hand piece or English Paper Piece these designs.  They're all wonderful.  I encourage you to find a book and take a look. 

Now it's time for the Peacock Party.  Feel free to link up a recent blog post below.  

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