My blog has been a bit quiet lately but I haven’t been idle. I have designed three, yes, three new quilt patterns!
The first is called Stained Glass. I wanted a pattern that was simple but used many different fabrics. Each block uses six different fabrics. You can use the same six fabrics in all blocks or you can mix and match. I think this would look great as a scrap quilt. Try making each block out of the same colour of scrap – have a red block and an orange block, you get the idea. I have made this quilt twice and I still have ideas in my head for more. How about using Japanese indigo’s and throwing in a few sashiko pieces here and there. Use a gold sashing fabric to set it off.
The first Stained Glass I made used Marimekko remnants of linen I bought on one of my trips to California. The linen was quite slippery and fine so I backed it with fusible interfacing before cutting out the blocks. I think it has a fresh, summery look.
The second Stained Glass I made used Art Gallery prints and an emerald green sashing. It gives the quilt a much richer texture. Same blocks but a very different result.
For more information on Stained Glass follow this link:: Stained Glass pattern
My second quilt is Fish and Chips (named by a friend). I love working with the fish shape. It is so easy to draw and you can play endlessly with fabrics and textures. I drew up the design for a friend’s birthday. He liked fishing so I decided to build a quilt around the fish shape.
As you can see from the photo, fish come in all shapes and sizes. For the initial quilt, I used a hand-dyed fabric for the “non-fish” blocks. To give the quilt more life, I used Shiva paint sticks to draw a kelp bed around the fish. The kelp is heavily stitched with shiny rayon thread to reflect the light coming down through the water.
The free-form “chips” around the edge of the quilt are created by sewing random pieces together from the scrap basket. I kept the colours in the same palette as the rest of the quilt to tie it together.
When I made the second quilt for my pattern, I tried to make it a bit more accessible to quilters by replacing the hand-dyed fabric with a fish print. This replaces the need for the kelp drawing and heavy stitching. There are some great fish prints out there as well as prints of seaweed, coral and ocean waves. I also altered the “chips” blocks using a free-form piecing technique.
This quilt uses fusible web to tack down the fish. This will need to be sewn down at some point. I chose to do this as I was quilting. You can have some fun with this and practice your free-form quilting technique. I used a lot of rayon and metallic threads to paint scales and gills onto my fish.
For more information on Fish and Chips follow this link:: Fish and Chips pattern
The third quilt of this trio is Seminole Revisited. It is the most complex and time-consuming of this trio. Seminole patchwork is a strip piecing technique developed by the Seminole Indians of southern Florida. They would sew strips of fabric together, then slice it up and sew it back together on an angle. Typically, they would use solid coloured fabric and the results were amazing.
I have given the technique a bit of a twist by using modern patterned fabric instead of all solids. I had in my head a vision of small blocks drawing the eye around the block. The Seminole technique offered a way to accomplish this.
The first quilt used 2 prints from Bali given to me by a friend. I paired them up with the brilliant red. The eye immediately goes to the red centres which pop out of the block. Ruby really likes this quilt…
When I finished this quilt, I thought to myself, what if instead of making the red centres the focal point of the square, I used a colour choice that made the centres recede and the surrounding fabric would become the hero of the quilt. I did this by choosing a dark brown centre. The surrounding fabrics were taken from my stash and I picked fabrics with a similar colour palette but they are all different in every other way. While I felt these fabrics would work well together, I still needed to work out how they would best go together. I always try and audition fabrics before sewing.
I hope you approve of the final colour solution. A friend of mine calls this Moroccan Marketplace because the colour palette reminds her of that area.
For more information on Seminole Revisited follow this link:: Seminole Revisited pattern
Last month I also released my first bag pattern. I have made many bags over the years, but this was my first pattern design. I’ve called the pattern African Tote Bag, it was a lot of fun to make. You can find more information at this link:: African Tote Bag pattern
I trust you enjoy reading about my latest patterns.
Until next time,
Leslie
