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!

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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

Anna Maria Horner (and the Peacock Party)

This week was so special.  I got to attend a lecture AND a class with Anna Maria Horner.

New Zealand really is a very long way away from all the quilting action in America, so when a quilting celebrity chooses to visit our country we all rejoice.

Anna Maria Horner with the quilt I made on her behalf

On Monday night I went to the lecture and heard about how Anna Maria journeyed from Art School to designing quilt fabrics.  Unlike many people who would give their right arm to be signed by Free Spirit Fabrics, Anna Maria didn't have to ask them to sign her - they invited her to design for them.

We heard about her design process, for both fabrics and quilts, and then we got to touch all the quilts and study them up close.

On Tuesday we had the class and had the option of making Anna Maria's Cross Country quilt in any of the three ways shown above.

They are all beautiful, but I chose the third option.

My initial layout as discussed with Anna Maria

My plan for the centre

Anna Maria talked about how she does applique and she gave some demos of her machine basting method.

It was a wonderful class, and I really hope that Anna Maria comes back to New Zealand again soon.  Thank you Busy Bee Quilt Shop for hosting the class.

Now it's time for the Peacock Party.  What have you been up to? Anything as exciting as a quilt class?

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter