off-centre medallion

A big bold quilt for you today! This is my Off-centre Medallion which was made a few months ago for issue 26 of Love Patchwork and Quilting which is out now in the UK.

I was so excited to have made the cover this month!!

I just love how great they have made my quilt look in this shoot.

Having only recently made a medallion quilt for my evening course I wanted to do something a bit different here, so decided to make each border a different width and design. This meant packing a lot of content and technique into the pattern, but I love how it turned out - packed full of colour and detail!

All the fabric used is by Robert Kaufman, lots of Kona Solids, Spot On dots and a little Carolyn Friedlander crosshatch in the centre.

Things were going really well until I decided to use a spiral quilting pattern. Oh my god never again!!! It was a total nightmare, took forever and was very stressful!

I got lots of encouragement form the lovely folks on Instagram telling me it would all be worth it at the end, and I do love the way it looks, so I guess they were right. But seriously never again!!

The backing fabric is Carnaby Street by Art Gallery Fabric. I think it's quite an old design which somebody gave to me a few years back when they were having a clear out. I had about 8 metres so expect to see it again one day!

It's funny, but while I was making this I just wasn't sure about it at all. Sometimes I absolutely love a quilt while I am making it but am disappointed when it is finished. This was the total opposite, every time I look at it I love it more!

And it isn't the only quilt I made for this issue, there will be another post later in the week all about a very special quilt I made in collaboration with the Edinburgh Modern Quilt Guild and with details of how it could be yours one day soon!!

Granny Squares Quilt

It always takes me a while to get round to these popular quilts that are quilt-a-longs etc. 

I've loved the Granny Square quilts from afar for a while now (especially the one Lynz made which was part of our Scottish Modern Quilt Exhibition last year) but never got round to making a whole quilt - until now!

Have you met Hector? He's our six month old Tonkinese kitten, and he is a big bag of trouble!! So of course the minute I finished binding this quilt and put it down he was all over it!

So I guess it gets Hector's seal of approval...
It was my friend and colleague Barbara's special birthday this week so I made her this quilt!

I did have some help. I was first up with our Edinburgh Modern Quilt Guild's Bee a couple of months back. We are a big group of 18 quilters so we have divided the Bee into two groups, the Jelly Rolls and the Layer Cakes, except no one can ever remember which group they are in!!

I'm in the Layer Cakes and 8 of the blocks here were made by the rest of the group, I contributed the other 12. Speaking of the EMQG, do you like our new logo? It's over there on the left near the top... My husband designed it for us and I think it's wonderful! And luckily so do the rest of the group :)

I've now got myself an extension table on my Pfaff so I can tackle big FMQ patterns like this. I got the inspiration for this pattern from one of the quilts at FOQ ( sorry no idea who made it, I just go around collecting ideas like a magpie!). But I love how it turned out and will use it again for sure!

It's backed with an Amy Butler fabric (or is it AMH?? God I am getting very menopausal at the moment and my brain has turned to mush!).

It's not a huge quilt (of course I didn't even measure it so have no idea really!), but a good lap quilt/throw size.

Anyway Barbara loves it and there were tears when I gave it to her (which I now expect, so remember that friends and family). It was especially nice because, as she's been working in the shop for the last few years and coming along to lots of classes too, she knows most of the quilters who made blocks for the quilt.

And that's another quilt ticked off the bucket list for me!!

Edinburgh Modern Quilt Guild

I've been meaning to post about this for ages. The Edinburgh Modern Quilt Guild is now well and truly established!
That's us above at meeting number 3, the first in my new studio, during our tea break (with cake of course!). We've had number 4 since then and have quite a few projects on the go already.

There are 18 of us. The picture above was taken with Tatyana's very clever phone that does panoramic shots. However my legs aren't 6 feet long and Tatyana only has one face! But you get the idea.
This was our second meeting in the pub (while I was between shops).
We are sticking at 18 for the moment as that is all I can fit around my table and we don't want to look for new premises. Also we've all bonded so well that we are going to be a little cruel and not let anyone else join!
 However if anyone wants to start their own MQG and would like any advice please email me.

We have 2 separate bees already started. The group I am in are the Layer Cakes and the other group are the Jelly Rolls. Anne and I started things off at meeting 3, I asked my group to make Granny Square blocks and Anne asked her's to make House blocks. She was super organised and wrote her own pattern!
These are all the blocks she got back last month

And these are the Granny Square blocks I got back, still to be trimmed, aren't they lovely?!

We are also working on a group quilt made from some donated blocks that made their way to me through a very circuitous route! We will give this to charity once finished.
And we have our own blog!
You can take a look here. If it is your month in the Bee than you can post about your chosen block, yourself and your favourite quilt. This seems to be a great way to get to know everyone (and learn each other's names!).
I am really enjoying being in this group and am pretty sure all the other members are too.
Yay for Modern Quilt Guilds!

One more thing, have you heard about the Handmade Fair at Hampton Court Palace? This is a new event involving Kirstie Allsop and Molly Makes. They have a huge roster of guests, including Kaffe Fassett, Brandon Mably, Cath Kidston and Stuart Hillard. As well as Kirstie herself of course! Tickets went on sale earlier this month and you can buy your's and learn more about the event here.

Bloggers Quilt Festival Spring 2013

Phew I just made it! 

Yes, I have just snuck in to the Blogger's Quilt Festival Spring 2013 on the last day!

Thanks so much to Amy for hosting one of my favourite events in the quilting year.

Usually I am right there at the front of the queue but this year I was waiting for a quilt to come back from the Long Arm Quilters. I picked it up last night.

This is 'Frida', and this is the first time I have ever had a quilt professionally quilted. It is also the first quilt I have 'made' that properly fits my bed!

And what a quilt!!

Frida was made as a Round Robin quilt in the Flickr group 'Around the bend and across the pond' (an offshoot of The Old Red Barn Co. Quilt Along) and finished last September.

We were a group of 8 tackling medallion quilts and called 'The Awesome Rawsome Round Robins!' Or ARRR8 for short.
We each sent a centre to the next person on the list and they added a border and sent it on to the next person who added a border, etc.
Every month we posted photos on Flickr so we could see how it was developing, which was so exciting!

My centre was this amazing Frida Kahlo fabric by Alexander Henry that was given me in a Flickr swap by Marilyn. I had been hoarding it as I didn't really know what I wanted to do with it and couldn't bear to cut in to it! I asked the group to use the centre as inspiration for their rounds.
And as you can see they all really went for it!
I don't think I have ever seen another quilt like it . It is huge (85 x 79" or 216 x 200cm), incredibly bright and loud (with a distinctly rastafari feel!) and with really extraordinary details. You can read more about the evolution of this quilt here.

I knew I wasn't up to quilting this monster myself, so I turned to Brian and Carole of Beechwood Quilting. I had been recommended to them by a few other UK quilters and they are based not far from where I live.
They spent a long time with me discussing how to tackle the quilt and coming up with great suggestions. In the end I pretty much left it up to them.

And I totally love what they've done! Look at those amazing leaves above! Aren't they incredible? They have added a whole new dimension to the quilt top.

This was always going to be a challenge to quilt and could so easily have been spoiled by an all over pattern. Instead Brian and Carole have picked out areas to quilt heavily, like the black above and left these incredible paper pieced leaves to 'pop-out' in relief.

Boy was this quilt hard to photograph! My husband just didn't have the arm length! And it was too windy this morning to hang it on the line. I used this Anna Maria Horner Field Study print for the backing and pieced it around the siggy block (which was signed by all the makers).
I was lucky enough to have the perfect binding, a stripe from Global Bazaar by Blend, and I stayed up pretty late last night attaching it. I knew I wouldn't have time to hand stitch from the back so I worked from the back first, turning over at the front and top stitching. It is my easy cheat method and actually looks really smart here.

This photo shows the gorgeous detailing coupled with the amazing quilting. Dolores appliqued and embroidered those beautiful exotic blooms in each corner and Jo added the 3D pinwheels along with the bunting style final border. Brian and Carole stippled so carefully in the black and orange so that the motifs really stand out. I also love the trailing leaves with little berries quilting pattern that cover the Echino jungle print which Dolores kindly provided.

This is such a special quilt, made almost entirely by others. All I have done is piece together the backing and bind it! Thank you so much to all my fellow ARRR8ers and to Brian and Carole for their wonderful quilting . I would thoroughly recommend them to anyone wanting to try a professional quilter. Their website is here.
There are so many amazing quilts in the Bloggers Quilt Festival, make sure you check them all out here. And voting starts tomorrow!

Blogger's Quilt Festival Autumn 2012

I have been entering a quilt in to every Blogger's Quilt Festival  for the last 3 years. This wonderful event is hosted by Amy Ellis at Amy's Creative Side and is a highlight of my quilting calendar.

This year I have a new finish to show you!
I just finished quilting 'The Neighbourhood' on Monday and managed to get some ok photos despite the very grey, greyness of autumnal Scotland at the present time (it's going to be sunny tomorrow but I'll be working all day, natch).

This is my take on Sarah Fielke/Kathy Doughty's 'The Burbs' quilt from the first Material Obsession book. It was made with the Tag Square Bee that ran on Flickr from October 2010 for a year. I finished piecing the blocks last Christmas and it's sat, folded and sad, in a cupboard until I got my act together and bought a more capable sewing machine (more on that later).

The Bee had some very talented stitchers but was also stricken with quite a bit of bad luck as participants dropped out through illness or simply disappeared. In the end I received 9 blocks back (including my favourite, above on the right, made by Julianna) and as I wanted a bigger quilt I made more blocks to take the number to 16.

This was not a chore as I love making improv house/figure blocks.
I had asked the bee members to make me houses or figures in aqua, pink and red (there was a lot of that colourway around back in 2010!) and they made me some beautiful blocks.

I raided my scrap bag for the piano keys border and added mini houses to the corners.

I loved playing around with the house themes and fussy cutting different things for the windows. The one above is the Babushka's house. They forgot about their toast in the kitchen and it's now doing a dance with the toaster! I'm really pleased with all the little details in this quilt, and I love spotting all the 'new to me' fabric from the Bee blocks.

Here is the back, it is a Sevenberry's polka dot with a strip of Melody Ross vintage ladies.
I usually hand quilt but that is partly because I have found any sort of machine quilting very stressful and disappointing when using my old basic Brother machine. But a few months ago I took the plunge and bought a Pfaff Quilt Expression 4.0.
Now FMQing is a total joy! In fact everything is a total joy with my lovely Pfaff.

This took around 3 hours to quilt and is the biggest quilt I have finished this way. These photos were taken after a wash and tumble dry. I am really pleased with how it turned out.

But as I was tidying up my sewing room once I'd finished I came across a bag full of these...

...Siggy blocks that were meant to go on the back! Ooops!! I guess this is the problem with leaving things too long before finishing them, you forget vital things like this.

Sorry to all you lovely girls who contributed to this quilt. I will turn these sweet little blocks in to a matching cushion :).

You can read more about the gestation of this quilt here.

I am so relieved to have this one finished and ticked off my long to-do list!
Now head on over to the Blogger's Quilt Festival and check out all the wonderful quilts there and enjoy reading all the amazing stories. And don't forget to enter the giveaway and nominate your favourite quilt!
Happy festival!

Finished Round Robin Top

My Frida Kahlo quilt top has arrived home!  And just look at it! Who would have thought that centre panel would inspire such a stunning quilt!!
It is actually SO big that I can't get a very good photo of it (90 x 81"). But taking it outside yesterday in the sun should give you an idea of how incredibly saturated with colour it is.

The girls that worked on this did such an amazing job. Here are some close ups from the outside in. The last round was done by the only other Brit Quilter in my group SewJo. I love how she framed the whole top with these brights/black points. And look at that tiny piece of fabric origami in the corners! Jo is so good at these tiny pieced corners.
You can also see part of Dolores's round here too. I had suggested a 'mysterious jungle' theme inspired by the centre fabric and Dee really went for it with this gorgeous Echino fabric - so perfect! And then out did herself with those needle-turn appliqued exotic flowers in the corners.

The round before was Greta's. How ingenius is that piecing?! I love this effect and the way she carried on the swathes of solids from Nichol's round of black gold and green bands (Rastafari!)

Susan pieced these clever stacked bricks for her round, all the girls have done such a great job matching the colours for this top!
Those awesome leaves and lines of sawteeth were all paper pieced by the very talented Christine, and I think this round, along with Pam's first one, really set the tone for the whole piece (and totally intimidated the rest of the group!). I am also in awe of their piecing abilities.

And here is Pam's first round. Those blue and red ribbons are all curve pieced into the red! She has done it so well that you are fooled in to thinking it is the design on the fabric. And looking it this again while typing, I've just realised how cleverly Dolores has mimicked the piecing in Pam's corners with her appliqued flowers!
There is just so much details here that I am still finding stuff!

 Here is the siggy block I sent with the quilt, all filled up!

 Look where Frida has been! She is very well travelled round America! You can read more about the start of her journey here.

I think I may have had a few wee moans about the cost of posting the tops to the USA, especially as they got so big! Dear Jo, who was always sending to me from Northamptonshire, sent me up one of her beautiful sewing/crochet wraps to compensate!

Jo, you are such a sweetie and I can't believe you hand made this, it is so professionally done. And also just what I need!

And on the day that my Around the Bend Across the Pond top came home, somebody else came to visit from Across the Pond (but she's not round the bend!). It's Karen Cosmos, an ORBC regular and Flickr friend from Vancouver. Karen came over 2 years ago and we had a lovely day in Edinburgh with Marg and Lynz. Karen was over then for her son's wedding to an Edinburgh girl and this time she is over to visit her first grandchild. She came to my shop to see me and buy a couple of my husband's photographic prints. I jumped at the chance to show her the top and she helped me spread it out on my craft table (which is actually really big!).

I feel so honoured to have this beautiful quilt top which all these lovely ladies have worked so hard on and put such beautiful work in to. Thank you ARRR8!!
Now this is going to have to go in my UFO pile for a bit as I have decided that I really should hand quilt it *gulp*, and I have a few other projects to finish first!