One Womans Trash is another Womans Treasure

This week one of my favourite things happened. A friend knocked on my door with a plastic carrier bag saying an elderly friend of her mums was having a clear out and she had heard I was an avid quilter, and would I like her old scrap bag? My friend apologised, said it's probably not what you want/need, feel free to throw it/recycle it if it's no good, etc etc. Yippeeee! My heart jumped a beat, because there is nothing I enjoy the expectation of more (except perhaps a rummage in a charity shop in a well heeled market town) than the donated scrap bag. I always have to wrestle it off of the usually awkward donor ( people feel like they are offering you literal scraps I think).

Within minutes I had the bag upturned on the floor in My Front Room, and after a hasty edit of the inevitable polyester bits and bobs, it yielded this impressive stash! Isn't it yum?

I can't decide which fabric I love the most, but it's between the bright blue with red and yellow flowers in the blue pile and the gorgeous primary group in the first piccie, so 1950's that colour combo? Which do you like best?

WIP Broken Circles Quilt

Top of my things to do list are to piece the backs for my Little Folks Dot in the Middle and English Skies/Irish Chain quilt. But I'm afraid, try as I might, I can't muster the self discipline to make my quilts in the linear start-finish manner that so many other quilt bloggers seem to manage! In the system that is 'idea-experiment-piece-baste-quilt-bind' I always have a log-jam at one point, usually the baste/quilt bit. I just cleared a hand quilting log jam, but seem to be building up another, the problem is that a new idea is just so compelling I have to give in to its demands!

I have wanted to make a broken circles quilt for ages, but yesterday I just started drawing around plates on a cardboard cereal packet as a template to see where it ended up. I have a pile of Freshcut fabrics that I had been planning to make a Quilt Kit from but after a change of plan I decided they would make a lovely Broken Circle quilt.

At the moment my kitchen table is covered in the pile of fabrics you can see above. The beauty of this pattern is that it creates interesting secondary patterns so I am having lots of fun playing with Kona Solids, I wish I had a design wall.

p.s Pixelated Fabric Squares

P.s ...........Thankyou all so much for your lovely comments about my Pixelated Quilt. I love Bloggers Quilt Festival, everyone is so nice!

When I cut the fabric for this quilt I cut a batch more extra squares, some went to good homes in the giveaway last week, but I have 5 piles left. They are 4"x4" squares of at least 24 fabrics that make up a colourwheel. They include Denyse Schmidt, Liberty for Quilts 1700-2010, Amy Butler, Jessica Levitt and many more.

It's not all of the fabrics in my quilt as some were proper little scraps out of the bucket so there was no extra to cut, but they do still make up a wheel as no colour areas are missed out.

So many people have commented that its hard to make a spectrum colour wheel, and hard to make a whole wheel from your stash. If anyone is interested I've listed the 5 colourwheel bundles on my etsy site so you could make your own version and add from your stash too, I'd love to see what becomes of them!

p.ps I have had a couple of questions about the background for my pixelated quilt. It is Kona Ash and I do also have a bolt of that in stock so if you wanted the fabric for teh quilt back too just drop me a message and I can add it to the listing as I currently sell Kona Cottons on Folksy

Bloggers Quilt Festival - Pixelated Quilt

Here is my Bloggers Quilt Festival entry. I'm calling it Pixelated.

It's my latest quilt so of course it's my favourite, I have that goldfish approach to what I like.
My inspiration was the PurlSoho colour wheel which I have had pinned to my ideas board forever, but it just looked a bit overwhelming to try and make. I had a breakthrough when one of my kids came into the sewing room and started making a puzzle, its a wooden colour wheel puzzle from potterybarn originally I think. I started throwing down matching fabric from the stash that matched the puzzle and it really was that simple once I started.

I'm kind of obsessed with circles on quilts, so it was a simple decision to make the pixels of colour circular( I use freezer paper shapes drawn around a kids ikea beaker) and appliqued them on by hand. All of that colour just made me happy working on the quilt - you get some quilts like that don't you? Well when I had finished the front I hadn't had enough of that colour therapy so I decided to use the scraps to make little circles for the back. The front was so ordered and controlled I decided to let the pixels have some fun on the back so I just threw the whole lot up into the air and pinned them where they landed (my kids just loved this stage!). I hand quilted the circles, then added randomised little circles all over to fill any big gaps.When it came to the binding, I auditioned pale grey, and white, but the old favourite Kona Coal worked really nicely as a frame, and served to mute down the splashes of colour in my final scraps incorporated into the binding. By this stage I had even less scraps from the spectrum, but I like how its served to make it all nice and random. This has really been a happy quilt to make, I hope you like it x

Mad Dogs and English (Wo)Men

.........go out in the midday sun.

The sun is shining here, not just shining but 27degreeing, proper paddling pool hot! Yippee. It's true that a bit of guaranteed sunshine and a BBQ that won't be rained off is enough to turn most englishpeeps a bit skippyyippeemad.

As a consequence I have been doing a lot of this............

And not much sewing. But last week, inspired by this picture at stashmanicure, I decided to hit the stash and make an Irish chain quilt from its and bits. I cheated a little bit and strip pieced the squares then rotary cut them, but i think there is enough variation even though usually i like it to be truly random. I used this really soft palate of old fashioned pinks and blues and yellows that I had made into a pile last week for my colour confidence post . I started making it, planning it would be againist a white centre, but i suddenly decided to go grey ( Kona Ash as usual), which I am so regretting now. I usually love the grey combo but it's all looking a bit too muted? I added the white spots to give it a bit of zing. I'm hoping that it's just because the sun is so bright and when the usual grey English light comes back it will look all sophisticated and calming? It seems when the sun shines I'm wanting to make an in yer face flamingo pink and azure blue Rio inspired tropical quilt, maybe that's this weeks challenge?!

Hunting for Kona in the English Countryside

As I merrily blathered on to a non-quilty friend recently about the scarcity of Kona in these parts of the English countryside she remarked ' is a kona an animal?' oops, I do forget sometimes that everyone doesn't live in quiltyland. But that said, it's a serious point - it really is very hard to get hold of decent solid cottons in colours you want to use here in the UK if you're serious about making your quilts modern. And everyone knows that quality cotton in modern shades means one thing - Kona Cottons. For two years I was a regular Hancocks of Padducah girl (In Kentucky USA, very cheap Kona solids in every colour.) But there are only so many times you can hand over £15+ to the postman in order to bust your package out of customs and excise gaol and still feel like you are getting a bargain ( £50 of fabric could end up costing +£30 more to ship and tax). So last month I decided it was time to start buying wholesale in Europe by the bolt.

I am now the proud owner of a bolt-stash (is that a term?) of Kona solids (from the left Essex Linen in Natural, Kona Cotton in Pale Flesh, Kona in Snow, Kona in Ash, Kona in Charcoal, Chambray Cotton in Pale Blue, Kona in Dresden Blue, Kona in Zucchini and Kona in Artichoke). These are my most favourite Kona solids, I love them.
Weirdly, just as I took delivery of my new stash I started getting questions from my lovely customers who are often fledgling quilters, starting out on their first quilt after a Make Do & Mend Kit had shown them the ropes, asking about where to buy solid fabrics. Turns out that I am not the only forlorn hunter of the elusive Kona in these shores!

As my raison d'etre when it comes to quilting is to get as many people as possible doing it ( so I don't have the whole kona/animal chat too often!) I figured maybe I should start sharing my stash and selling Kona cottons to other frustrated British quilters.

I am listing these colours over on my folksy site. It's just a little bolt-stash at the moment cos it's stuff I like and use. But heh, I'm open minded and keen to try new things, if you have a fav colour that I haven't tried, drop me a mail and maybe I'll get a bolt of that in too, I'm excited to find out what others are using!

Colour Confidence in Quilting

I wanted to write a post about colour for my MakeClub Bee-ers and Online Bee'ers alike, as it's the area in quilting that holds the most fear for the most people. It is the big stumbling block that stops so many people taking that leap from the big group of people who have 'always wanted to make a quilt' into those who do make quilts and LOVE IT! Why stand on the yearning wishing side for another minute when you could be having so much fun actually doing it over this side???

There is such a mythology around 'being good at colour'. I hear so often the following; 'I'm no good at choosing colours, i don't know what 'goes', what if i choose the 'wrong' colours?'

You really shouldn't waste time worrying about it because;

1. You are good at choosing colours!

2. You can't go wrong

3. If you're nervous, cheat and copy, it's legitimately called inspiration!

You see, I think that everyone has a built in colour guide, but it's set to their own frequency. We all have that 'eeww' moment when we feel that something doesn't 'go'. Its the same impulse that makes us like the taste of some things and not of others. We don't agonise and doubt our food taste so why our visual taste? As long as you're not going eeeww at your own quilt then that's all that matters!


My top tips:
1. Go with what you know you like for your first quilt. Pick colours that you feel comfortable with and you genuinely like, it will make the process less fraught with self doubt.

2. If you still don't know what you like, then look about your home and pick out items you like and use them as a colour guide. Use clothes, cushions, pictures, wherever you find pattern and colour that you like. I like to use skirts; Kids storybooks are a really rich source of colour combostea towels are an unexpected source of good colours too!


3. Go to a good greetings card shop and buy a card that you love. Then pick apart the colours and match your fabrics to them. Here is a card I like and here is a colour scheme matched to it, see how it works? Simple? 4. Lastly the selvage cheat. If you find a fabric you love that has lots of colours within in, then look at the selvage at the side. Each of those little dots is giving you a clue to what colours will look great with your print. If you take the little spots to your fabric store and just match the dots you will have a beautiful quilt! I promise it really can be that easy.



So if you are planning on making your first quilt, or following our Newbie Quilters Bee Along start choosing some fabrics and dreaming about that first quilt colour combo with confidence!