Licorice Allsorts

There's nothing like a quilt show deadline to make me hurry up and finish a quilt.  

I've been working on this quilt since 2021, but now it's finished and it was even displayed in the Great New Zealand Quilt Show (TGNZQS) in Christchurch in May 2025.  

I'm really pleased it's finished because it's a lovely little quilt.  The colours are just so soft and the black is very dramatic against the pastels.  The coloured fabrics are Quilt Quality Chambray by Tilda . 

Licorice Allsorts is a Wendy Williams design and I love it.  I did it as a block of the month through Material Obsession in Sydney, Australia.  I loved all the hand stitching with Sue Spargo Eleganza Perle 8, but machine piecing the blocks was a bit trickier.  

Once I had finished the quilt top I hand quilted it with Aurifil 28wt in complementary colours.  fortunately my local quilt shop found a piece of black woollen batting big enough for it because I was worried that white batting might show through the black linen blocks. 

Finished size is 53" x 53"

Pretty in Pink

Here's my latest finish - Pretty in Pink. As I said last week, I had to rescue my Tilda fabrics from a plan gone wrong.  There's little snippets of Tilda in this quilt, but they seem to have been over taken by Tula Pink!

I enjoy watching Tula Pink's videos each week on Instagram (or Facebook) and she often talks about how all of her collections are designed to work together.  I've used fabrics from three of her collections here and they really do all work together.

The Lazy Stripe pink sashing and Dragonfly border are both from Moon Garden.  

The bright green border is Tower 7 from Zuma, and the Tent Strip Karma binding is from True Colours.  

I've called it Pretty in Pink because it is pretty and it is pink.  I loved the movie Pretty in Pink when it came out in 1986.  The lives of American teenagers looked so much more exciting than our ordinary lives here in New Zealand.  We walked to school every day in our school uniforms while American teenagers whizzed around in cars and wore mufti every day!

I especially love the main song from the movie - "If You Leave" by Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark.  Here it is to save you looking it up. Enjoy a blast from the past. 

I had this quilt machine quilted at Busy Bee Quilt Shop in Wellington.  The pattern is "Maze e2e a" from Sharon Perry of House of Creations.

The pinwheel blocks at 10" finished and the finished size of the quilt is 60" x 70".

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

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Pretty!

I've just picked up this quilt from my long arm quilter at Busy Bee Quilt Shop and I love it.

I don't want to post a photo of the whole quilt yet because I'm going to put the binding on this weekend and it will be worth the wait.

Tilda meets Tula

I didn't set out to make a pretty pink quilt, but now that I have I'm really happy with it.   

You may remember that a few weeks ago I started puddling around with some pretty Tilda fabrics.  I rushed in to making a foundation paper pieced pattern, but then I started to doubt myself - even though my blog followers expressed great confidence in me to turn it into something good.    

At our guild meeting someone held up a lovely pinwheel quilt and I thought, "That's an idea - I could make some pinwheel blocks to break it up". So I started to make pinwheel blocks, but then I decided that I liked the pinwheels better than original idea so now I have a pinwheel quilt. And there's minimal Tilda fabrics in it because they are still in the blocks that I don't like any more.  I only bought fat quarters so I'll have to rescue some of the fabric soon because I really do like the Tilda. 

Anyway, I'm going to put the binding on this quilt this weekend and take photos of it along with two (yes two!!) other quilts that I'm in the process of finishing this weekend.  After months of not a lot of action I'm now going to finish three quilts in November.  

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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Puddling around

When I got home from Tekapo I had a sudden desire to sit at my sewing machine and just sew.  

I bought some lovely Tilda fabrics at Fairlie on the way to Tekapo, so I cut into them before they could even make it into my stash. 

Now I'm not sure if I even like where this is heading.  

I thought I could be spontaneous and just put random blocks together like in the book, but I much prefer it when I place them carefully.  I've even considered adding sashing to this to separate the blocks, but I'm not sure how to progress yet.  I guess the answer is to make more blocks and see where it leads me. 

I'm foundation paper piecing these blocks to stop the triangles stretching.  

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

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Licorice Allsorts part 2

Easter felt like my own personal quilt retreat just for me.  I got so much sewing done!

I thought it might take me until the end of April to piece all the blocks for the Licorice Allsorts quilt, but I sewed every day over Easter and they're all finished now.  

I revisited Month 3 and remade one of the blocks, but it's not a lot better than the first time around.  I've made a note on the pattern to cut the pieces bigger if I ever make that block again.  

Now I'm sewing the blocks together and thinking about how I'm going to hand quilt it.  I've just ordered a very pretty backing from a local shop and will show you it when it arrives.

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