Tendrils quilt

It's a long time since I made a quilt with Kaffe Fassett fabric and I had forgotten what an uplifting joyful experience it can be!

This quilt was destined for the issue of Today's Quilter that coincides with Festival of Quilts so it always need to be a bit of a showstopper. And what better fabric than the Kaffe Fassett Collective to obtain that effect!

As you can see it made the cover, as well as the magazine exhibition stand (see my last post for a photo!).

I've been playing around with the idea of appliqueing leaves over patchwork for a while now and had already made this mini with leaves and stems sewn by hand. But that wasn't going to work for me (and my dodgy hands) for a whole quilt.

So this is when I developed my Tendrils Technique that I have been using on a smaller scale for pouches recently. It's what I demonstrated on the Aurifil stand at FOQ (you can still watch that here).

I basically created a patchwork brick wall with the Kaffe fabric and then let the leaves climb up it!

As I'd chosen a mixture of warm and cool fabrics from the range (by Free Spirit) I thought it would look good with a 'temperature' colour wash.

Here's a shot from the magazine. I love how the leaves seem to grow out of the carpet here.

I quilted it with a trailing feather overall FMQ pattern in a neutral shade of Aurifil 50wt. It is so busy that I didn't need the quilting to show up too much, but I love the texture that a feather pattern gives.

I made a mistake with the dimensions and it ended up bigger than I planned at 80 inches. I was annoyed at the time but it actually fits my bed perfectly so I think this may be my new bed quilt for the winter. It is certainly one of my all time favourites already!