Blogger's Quilt Festival 2013...

 it's that time of year again.

the time when Amy inspires us all by running the blogger's quilt festival and when i get to catch up on all the amazing quilting that has been going on around blogland.

i love taking part in the festival, not because i have any delusions of winning, but to be a part of it.

to be honest i wasn't really sure which quilt to enter and then i realised i was actually impeded by the fact that this year i have started many quilts and finished very few so it was  more a case of what i actually could enter.

i have decided to enter my elephants love water in the baby quilt category.

as soon as i saw this fabric at the beginning of the year i knew i had to quilt something out of it (i am having the same feeling about the talented duo's new collection).

it is one of those collections that speaks volumes by itself s doesn't really need too much complicated piecing to make it look good.

i decided to make a wonky windmill kinda block pairing the umbrella prints with coordinating kona solids. i backed it in a simple solid red, again less was more.

i didn't have the right fabric in my stash for the binding. nothing was singing to me when i held fabrics up against the quilt top so it was down to the cellar to print a stripe.

perfect!

it is a simple quilt. it is a small quilt but i absolutely loved working with the umbrella prints fabric and was delighted when a reader loved it so much that they wanted to buy it. i wasn't so pleased to part with it, so i guess i will just have to purchase some floating world and make a substitution.

thanks for stopping by and don't forget to check out what else is going on at the festival. x

 I have been having a little fun playing around with a few things this week all in the name of "product design and development". That makes it sound much more important than "having a play and see what happens".

A few weeks ago I started experimenting with 2 colour prints, the results of which were the orange and grey below.

I loved the effect but knew that the 2 colours I had picked were too bold together. I hadn't really planned to use these 2 colours together...it was a result of the newsprint testing pieces for the colours I happened to be using at the time and I was merely overlaying on a whim.

It did make me discover however that there was potential for a 2 colour print with my designs, particular with the stripe and scruffy daisy.

Again inspiration triggered by my old newsprint tester sheets, I set to print in pale blue and turquoise and here are the results below...

...and I'm really rather pleased with it!

Is it wrong to be excited by ones own work? It has such a fresh summery (ha!...there's that strange word again) feel to it and think it would work on so many things. I'm planning on making some pretty summery wash-bags to start with and also incorporate into a quilt I'm doing. I printed up a few to start with, so if you want to grab a piece go here.

I'm planning to try it in a light pink/dark pink combo so watch out for that.

My other "product design and development" this week involved printing onto some Quilter's Linen swatches I had received with the view to creating my winter (that's more familiar...) range. It's hard to get a feel for how a fabric is going to look when it is printed on so doing it this way is great.

Quilter's linen is really lovely. It is 100% cotton but has a look of linen due to it's texture markings. I find linen to sometimes be a little stretchy so this is a perfect alternative as it looks great and sews up beautifully.

I now have rather big decisions to be made as actually I like how so many of them have turned out. So a little help please...which colours would you like to see in the collection??

 It is no secret that I am a huge fan of Lotta Jansdotter. Her simplistic , fresh, Scandinavian style ticks all boxes as far as I am concerned.

She shook the world when her first line Echo for Windham fabrics hit our shelves last year and I am predicting an even bigger world shake up when her next line Bella arrives in August.

I was lucky enough to be sent a charm pack of Bella and let me tell you, it sure has the wow factor. I am going to stick my neck out here and say I may actually prefer it to Echo.

Maybe it's the colour combos that Bella comes in or may it's that the patterns aren't quite as bold individually so work really well when adding to projects.

Because a charm pack isn't the biggest pack on the block I had to team it with other fabrics and because I wanted to showcase Bella in all it's glory i decided to team it with coordinating solids (in this case some lovely Klona cottons), rather than any other prints.

I split the charm pack up into 2 groups and used the orange and cobalt blue pieces in this quilt, saving the greys, yellow and turquoise for my second project which you can see a glimpse of in the bottom photo below.

Again, trying to keep it simple, I backed my Bella quilt in a denim coloured cotton and bound it in my new orange stripe fabric, which actually was born from a desire for an orange stripe to bind it with!

I for one can not wait for this line to be released and having had a play with a few precious pieces I am very excited about having more to really go for it with.

If you want to read more about this line and how Lotta creates her designs go for an informative read here.

And watch this space for what I am doing with the other pieces...

 It's been a hellava week this week. One that can be basically be described as a bit of a post celebration blur.

I'll post about the amazing weekend we had at another time, when I can put into words what we all went through and when I've picked myself up off the floor from exhaustion. 

I don't remember Sam's flooring me quite so much, but I think that's a lot to do with us being out of routine this week with the extra Bank Holidays and Half Term. If we had been back to routine the next day we would have had no choice but to get on with it.

We spent most of this week sleeping late, saying farewell to visiting family and friends and generally living in the moment.

By the time Matthew went back to work yesterday we were finding it tricky to get out of our slump.

I dived into the cellar to get some printing done for some orders that were piling up and as is my normal trick started playing around with an idea that had been forming in amongst the blur.

As you know i normally print in colour on white fabric but wanted to give printing on some colours a go.

This ended up with me printing on a fair few of my solids and rather liking where it was going. The main reason behind this was the need to order more magnets and deciding that perhaps they would look better with more colour.

I've put up a couple of pics here to get a feel of the difference.

What do you reckon? Printing on solids or printing on white?

I'm rather liking how the solids look coupled with other fabrics. The design seems to stand out better, particularly with the blues, but on the other hand the postage stamp block seems to work with the print on white.

Maybe I'm too tired this week to make a decision or maybe there is a place for both.

Do you have an opinion? Would you like to see more designs on a coloured background?

Would love to know what you think. You are probably less tired than I am...unless of course you are recuperating from FQR...

I have an unhealthy obsession with orange at the moment.

It all started when I received these fabrics (more on that to come very soon) and then the need for a binding fabric to bind the quilt I am making with them.

I couldn't find what I was after so I decided to print it. Easy, huh?

While I have been working on that quilt, all I can think about is orange, orange and more orange.

Consequently I have been trying out my designs in orange...

...and I absolutely love them.

I guess it is no surprise I can be so easily swayed, as at one time I couldn't look yellow in the eye and we all know where that has got me.

I'm pretty sure this love affair will be around for some time yet and having printed all 3 now 2 I'm now undecided which to use on the binding... scruffy daisy or tiger stripes...what do you reckon?

And if you have your own orange crush going on at the moment I've put together these 3 fabrics as a nice sunshiny summery set in the shop...it's right here.

 I would like to blame Lu Summers for my latest addiction...

Yesterday Lu posted about her fantastic Teeny Weeny block, following a tutorial she had found. I was smitten and before I knew it I had countless 2" squares sitting on my desk.

Lu had found the tutorial from Elizabeth Hartman via Pinterest (don't you just love Pinterest?) and set to work on her block. If you haven't already seen Lu's block go check it out...it's super cute.

 This really is one of those genius ideas that makes sewing with tiny pieces of fabric a doddle and that's from someone who likes her pieces big!

The secret behind this method is placing the cut squares onto fusible interfacing and then 

folding and sewing in strips. You will honestly not believe how simple and quick it is and before you know you too will be requesting to be a member of Stamp Collection Block Anonymous because I defy you not to be addicted!

Head right here for Elizabeth's step by step tutorial, but be warned you will not walk away unscathed...