Tiling inspiration

As I may have mentioned, we've recently moved into a new house, well an old house really by today's standards, a 1930s semi complete with artex ceilings and wood chip wallpaper! Joy! We're slowly making progress on the wood chip - eucalyptus oil works wonders - but after a day of stripping I was really missing a bath. The house came with a large walk-in shower, which while nice, didn't come close to a long hot soak. So this week I'm very pleased to say we now have a bath! Yay! Originally we planned to try and fit it ourselves, however, one look at the pipework and weird boiler, we soon decided to get help. While they did all the complicated stuff, we thought we'd at least have a go at the tiling, I've done a bit before, though they were large tiles with a normal layout... this time, we went for the small 'metro' tiles in a brick formation... hey, I'm a quilter used to lining up seams and points, how hard can it be right?? Famous last words...

Wanting to get the plumber back to finish the job before he forgot us, we were under a little pressure to get the tiling done, so I decided to start on my own - let's just put it this way, everything I could get wrong, I did wrong - I was so paranoid about getting the verticals lined up with every other row, I forgot to check the horizontals - you would think I'd know better! Then we'd picked the wrong spacers, way too big! When I realised I'd gone wonky, I tried to readjust, so we have a nice curve now! Justin helped finish tiling the second wall that night, then I went on to the grouting... into those huge spaces! Thank goodness I didn't go for the grey grout in the end. Having pulled and strained every muscle in my body, I left Justin to grout the second wall. I suppose with the white tiles and white grout, it doesn't look too bad.. but never again!

Anyway, why should I mention this in a quilting blog you may ask. Well, it seems that the brick-like design crept through the pain and into my subconscious and while I was struggling to come up with a design for some new directional prints, this one sprang to mind.

My original plan for these Coonawarra Red prints from Red Rooster Fabrics was another version of the All Squared Up quilt kit, but I thought the directional patterns may cause problems, so thought they would be better kept in one largish block. I then added some simple sashing between each one and laid them out in this brick pattern. I then worked out how to make sure the horizontal sashings all lined up and I think the effect works really well! This will of course soon be a quilt kit and is much larger than my other kits - I had so many people at recent shows ask for double or king size quilts! 

Today I've been sewing a meandering free motion design over the whole top, and hopefully I'll get the binding on tonight in front of the tele.

I've also uploaded these pretty Coonawarra Red fabrics into the Sewmotion shop to buy by the metre, as well as some additions to the lovely P&B Blenders collection. Why not go and have a mooch - while you're there, you could treat yourself in my Easter sale! Simply use the code Easter20 at checkout to get 20% off everything in store (offer ends at midnight on Monday 17th April).

I do hope you all have peaceful and creative Easter weekends, I have a feeling mine might involve painting the bathroom... Happy Easter to you all. xx

Linking up with Let's Bee Social, Midweek Makers and Needle & Thread Thursday