But I have a few recent finishes and I want to record them here for my own future reference.
First up is my Jelly Stars - I don't have a proper name for it yet, so I'll just refer to it by the pattern name for now.
I used the Jelly Stars pattern by Modernly Morgan for this one. I won a Kaffe Fassett Emperor jelly roll some years ago and it was time to use it so I paired it with a Kona Solid in Kale. I needed a few more strips to complete the pattern, so I raided my stash for complementary Kaffe fabrics.
I pieced the back from some off cuts from Kaffe Fassett widebacks.
I had this one quilted by Busy Bee Quilt Shop and I'm really pleased with the result. It measures 62" x 72".
Each year in January I like to start a new Kaffe Fassett quilt. This year I chose Lightning Strike from Quilts on an English Farm.
When I made Kaffe quilts I like to take inspiration from the books, and use fabrics that I already have in my stash. I love mixing up older prints with the new ones.
This pattern is just giant half square triangles but the placement gives the quilt real movement.
I love a soft, hand quilted quilt with wool batting and that's what I've done here. I quilted the whole quilt with a variegated Aurifil 12wt thread and I love the result.
While I was at the Great New Zealand Quilt Show in Christchurch I picked up a pattern for a quilt as you go table runner.
I didn't really need a table runner, but I wanted to experiment with the technique because I bought some Japanese jacquard fabrics in Japan that I think I'm going to have to quilt as I go. They look like they will fray very easily so this may be the best method for working with them.
The pattern I bought came with a charm pack of Kaffe Fassett fabrics so I followed the instructions and sewed it up quite quickly. I'm really pleased with the result and I learnt a few tricks along the way.
Now I need to firm up my ideas for my Japanese fabrics.
And I have another finish to share with you. I'm calling this one "Crazy" because it sends your eyes a bit crazy as you try to pick out the pattern. However, I chose a very clever motif for the long arm quilting and that may help you to see the blocks. (Garden Trellis 4 by House of Creations)
I purchased this Kaffe Fassett Marquee Stripe fabric at one of our guild sales days and I didn't have a lot to play with. this is all of the blocks I could make from what I had. And it's long out of print now.
I couldn't find a fabric in my stash to complement the top, so the next best option is to go opposites so I went for beautiful Cactus Flower - also by Kaffe Fassett Collective.
I showed the early stages of this quilt back in July, and I had actually forgotten about it until I stumbled across it a few weeks ago. Fortunately I still had enough of the teal stars to do the binding in the same fabric. I'm very happy with that decision, although I did consider a black stripe for a while.
The Shiraz stripe in the border triangles is from Kaffe Fassett Collective too.
My Crazy quilt is 50" x 60" so it could be used as a lap quilt of on a single bed.
I haven't been away, but I've been super busy with work, cricket admin and quilt guild admin. I've hardly had any time for sewing lately, but I decided to fix that this week and I finally made time to pick up my rotary cutter.
I'd been thinking about using some of my Kaffe Fassett stripes so I browsed through some of my older Kaffe books and came upon this pattern from Kaffe Quilts Again (2012):
I only had the Marquee fabric in the lighter shades so mine looked like this:
random
some diamonds forming
Diamonds!
and even more diamonds
I'm going to add a pieced border, but I don't have much of the Marquee stripe left so I'll have to use something else. I'll be sure to post another photo when I've got the top together.
There's nothing like an exhibition deadline to make me hurry up and finish a quilt.
This one all started when I saw an offcut of the beautiful Stone Flower centre in the remnant bin at my local quilt shop. I knew I had to take it home and and turn it into something pretty.
There's always a good selection of medallion quilts in Kaffe Fassett's books so I perused my little library and came across the Blue Square Dance quilt in Quilts in the Cotswolds.
I didn't fancy making the final border on the Blue Square Dance quilt, so I turned the page and used the border from the Flowery Jar pattern instead.
The final touch was a great Kaffe Fassett print for the binding that incorporated all of the colours used in the quilt - Chevron Stripe in Blue.
I've called it Faith because:
a. I love George Michael's music
b. You've got to have faith to build an impactful quilt.
There's nothing like an exhibition to make you hurry up and finish a quilt.
This recent finish is a combination of two Jen Kingwell designs.
Back in 2019 I started Jen's Marshal Mystery Quilt published through QuiltMania. I was very proud of my central motif when I finally got it to sit flat, but as time went on and more and more of the quilt got released, I didn't feel inspired to finish it according to the pattern.
But I've always hung onto this centre piece and I knew I'd find a way to use it one day.
Last year another Australian quilt designer, Chris Jurd came and spoke to our guild and taught some classes. I loved Chris' show and tell and the stories behind many of of quilts. I decided that my vision was too small and I needed to think BIG.
So I dug out the centre of my Marshal Mystery Quilt and decided to applique it onto a back ground. And because I'd been seeing a lot of lovely Daylesford quilts from Jen Kingwell's Quilt Recipe book, I decided to add some borders using Jen's method and mixing them up with a few blocks.
It was so liberating to just make a few blocks for the borders rather than thinking that I needed to carry the same design right around the quilt. To top it all off I used Kaffe Fasset's Shiraz in Grey from my stash on the final border.
Finally, because the hand quilting pile was growing bigger and bigger, and I wasn't even sure hand quilting would show up on this quilt, I took it to Sue B at Busy Bee Quilt Shop in Wellington and she worked her magic on it. Thank you Sue!
As for the name? I'm continuing my theme of naming quilts after songs, and Purple Zone by The Pet Shop Boys and Soft Cell gets a good thrashing in my car. It seemed an appropriate name for this guilt given how much purple is in it.
I hadn't even seen the video until I went searching for this YouTube link, and it is a bit weird, but I love the chord progressions in this song so I'm sticking with it for the name of this quilt.
And, I still have 4 of these little hand pieced circle blocks from the Marshal Mystery Quilts that I may well use in the future. They were meant to be semi circles but I joined mine up to make circles.
Hello!! I'm back and I've got a finished top to show you.
I'm calling it Stone Flower because the fabric in the centre is the Stone Flower wide back by Kaffe Fassett Collective. Here's how it evolved over a short period of time back in April 2023.
Another wide back by Kaffe Fassett Collective
mixed in with Cactus Flower in blue
I took elements of the Blue Square Dance pattern from Kaffe's Quilts in the Cotswolds book and used them to expand on my fussy cut Stone Flower centre piece. But I stopped when I got to the final border because I didn't fancy the labour intensive border shown in the book. So it sat on the shelf for nine months.
Then January 2024 rolled around and I decided to finish some more WIPs. So I browsed through the book and spotted the triangle border on the Flowery Jar pattern and decided to use that border instead. I wanted to bring out the green again so I found an Alison Glass print that was just the right shade of green and I used that.
I couldn't decide if I liked the green triangles pointing in or out, but I went with my original plan and have pointed them out. It feels like there's more green showing when I point them out and that's what I wanted.
Now it's finished and ready for long arm quilting. I've already got 4 quilts in my hand quilting pile so this one is going straight to the long arm quilter. I intend to use it as an everyday quilt. It will replace my very thin Kaffe jelly roll quilt that I made about 10 years ago.
