Blue Monday

I'm very pleased to report that I've finished the bear paw quilt that I made to celebrate Capital Quilters 40th anniversary. I used the Archie pattern by Penelope Handmade.

I wanted to try something different and I've always liked the Irish Chain effect.  I used Essex Linen for the chains, and an Anna Maria Horner print for the blocks - Coreopsis in Shadow | Made my Day by Anna Maria Horner.  The background is all white and pale blue low volume scraps from my stash. 

The pattern has four size options and I chose the throw size so it is 70" x 70".

 I had this quilt quilted by Busy Bee Quilt Shop with a simple Baptist Fan pattern and I think it suits it well.   I called it Blue Monday, continuing my tradition of naming my quilts after my favourite songs from the 80's. 

Our guild's logo is the bear paw block - also known as the Hand of Friendship block.  So when our guild had our 30th anniversary we were all encouraged to make quilts using bear paws.  Here's what I made then - my Scrappy Bear Paw quilt.  You can read about it here. 

And now, 10 years later we were encourage to make another bear paw quilt for our 40th anniversary, so I made Blue Monday. What if I'm still a member in another 10 years time at our 50th? What will I make then? 

And what if I'm still around another 10 years after that for our 60th? I sure hope I'm still quilting then.  

Baby Quilts x 3

A few weeks ago my niece had a baby girl.  So of course I just had to make a quilt for the new baby.  

 

I decided to cut into a special piece of fabric I'd bought two years ago at our Symposium in Lower Hutt.  It was 

Homeward by Monika Forsberg for Anna Maria Horner Conservatory by Freespirit Fabrics.

But I didn't really do the maths first and I ended up with left over squares.  So I decided to make a little dolly quilt for the baby's almost two year old big sister. 

But then I still had more feature blocks left over, so I made a whole new quilt for the big sister.  

So what started out as one quilt for a new baby, ended up as three quilts for both girls and a dolly.

They have received them now and are thrilled with them.  The dolly quilt has had a lot of use already.  

Mariner's Compass

On Monday I went to a class with visiting Australian tutor, Chris Jurd.  We spent the day making one big 18" Mariner's Compass block.

I'm really pleased with how my block turned out, especially as I made it all from stash!!  I didn't have enough of my favourite green for the background, so Chris encouraged me to alternate it with another green and it's worked out well. 

The fabrics I used were all left over from my Endless Lockdown quilt made back in 2020. The kit I had purchased was very generous with the fabrics, so I could make more Mariner's Compass blocks with different animal centres if I wish.  The fabric was designed by Monika Fosberg for Anna Maria Horner's Conservatory Craft.

Here's some finished examples Chris showed us at the class.  I'm not sure how I'm going to finish my block yet, or if I'm going to make more to make something bigger.  

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

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Material Girl

I have another finish to share with you today.  

This is "Material Girl", a quilt that I started in a class with Anna Maria Horner back in November 2019, in Wellington, New Zealand.  It's based on Anna Maria's pattern called Cross Country. 

My plan was to use a lot of Anna Maria Horner's fabrics in this quilt, but somehow I gravitated back to my Kaffe Fassett favourites as you can see below!

I spend so long dithering over what to put in the large side triangles.  I eventually decided on Cactus Flower by Kaffe Fassett and I'm very pleased with that decision. 

I decided not to hand quilt this quilt.  Instead, I took it to my friend Rayna Clinton of Tui Song Quilting in Wellington, and together we chose a flowing edge to edge design.

Now that it's finished I can see that the quilting almost disappears due to the highly patterned fabrics, so I'm very glad that I didn't choose to hand quilt it. 

I do LOVE the back. It's a Kaffe Fassett wideback called Full Blown.

The Cross Country pattern has three major variations.  Anna Maria carried all three quilts to New Zealand to show us - plus more!

I instantly knew that I liked the third variation, so that's the one that I chose to make. I like to have lots of different fabrics in my quilts, and the third variation allowed for that. 

I started off with this centre in the class:

But when I got home I struggled to extend it out, so I started again with this centre and it felt much more natural for me. I do like to challenge myself to try different things, but sometimes I just have to give up and go with what I know will work. 

Here's a link back to my post on the class I attended in November 2019 with Anna Maria Horner. Click here. 

Finished size is 72" x 72" 

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

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Endless Lockdown

Look at this! It's a finished quilt!

This is the Endless Summer pattern by Anna Maria Horner. But I've decided to call my version Endless Lockdown to reflect the fact that I made it during the COVID-19 lockdown of March/April/May 2020.

I first saw this quilt when Anna Maria came to New Zealand in November last year.  It was one of the quilts Anna Maria showed during her trunk show.  I just loved the quirky images and the way that they were used in the quilt, so I bought the kit as a Christmas present to myself.

At Easter I decided that I needed something substantial to get my teeth into, so I cracked open the kit and started to make this quilt.  I worked on it every day for the next three weeks and loved every minute of it.

The quilt is 64" x 64" so I thought I might have something that would work for the backing.  I found a big piece of Libs Elliott skulls fabric in purple that was almost big enough.  I fussy cut some of the leftover fabrics and made a strip to make the backing big enough.

 

The back looks almost as good as the front

I've got a backlog of quilts to be hand quilted, so I decided to get this quilt quilted by a local long arm quilter, Rayna Clinton of Tui Song Quilting at Wainuiomata.  I know Rayna through our guild, and I've been impressed with her quilting on other people's quilts.

As soon as we were free to leave our homes, I went to see Rayna and we discussed patterns and thread colours for my quilt.  A week later my quilt was finished and ready to pick up.  I asked Rayna to  baste a couple of other quilts at the same time, so my hand quilting pile now has grown even bigger!

So my quilt is finished - quilted, bound, washed and ready to keep my knees warm on winter nights. I'm really happy with how it's turned out.

I've included a link at the top to Anna Maria Horner's website, but a word of warning - be very careful ordering any quilting supplies from outside your home country at the moment.  I know people in Australia, New Zealand and Europe who are all waiting for items to ship from USA at the moment. I'm sure there are problems with freight going the other way too, so just try to order locally if at all possible to avoid disappointment.



Now it's time for the Peacock Party.  Feel free to link up a recent blog post and let us know what you've been working on.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Cross Country Quilt

This week I've been working on my Cross Country quilt, designed by Anna Maria Horner.

I attended a wonderful lecture and class with Anna Maria back in November 2019.  You can read all about it here.

Anna Maria showed us three different versions of her Cross Country quilt (see above).  They all have the giant "X", but the arms of the X are worked in different ways.  I decided to make the version on the right that looks like this:

However, when I got home, I decided that I didn't really want to piece the centre of the X's, so I dug through my stash and found two half yards of Kaffe Fassett Artisan fabric that do the job perfectly. You might notice that I've bordered it with some on Anna Maria Horner's latest Conservatory fabric to provide a break between the heavily patterned areas. 

Using this "cheater" fabric means that I still have enough enthusiasm to applique flowers onto the giant triangles when I get to that stage.  I might do some applique like this:

I know the fabric that I want for the giant triangles, but it's in Australia and I'm in New Zealand.  I'll just have to put this quilt aside now and work on something else for a while.

It's time for the Peacock Party.

What have you been up to this week? Are you still merrily working through your stash and WIPs? Or are you slowly realising that having limitless sewing time isn't quite as good as you thought it might be?  Feel free to link up a blog post below, or if you're not a blogger, feel free to leave a comment.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter