It's that time of year again when the lovely Amy Ellis of Amy's Creative Side hosts this wonderful quilt party where we can share and be inspired by fellow quilters around the world. Click here to find out more and to see all the truly stunning quilts.
My entry has to be my Rainbow Rings I entered into the Festival of Quilts earlier this year.
Having totally fallen for curved English paper-piecing in a big way, I thought I should really create a show quilt using this technique and decided to raid my stash and make a scrappy rainbow design. Having planned out the shapes on the computer and worked out how many of each colour I needed, I dragged out my many, many boxes of scraps and got pulling - this is how the quilt started...
I then worked on the rings making sure the colours were in sink as they went round.
Then I had a problem - what to back it onto? Originally I had planned to go with the cream as I had used grey in a previous project. But as much as I looked at each version, the dark grey kept calling to me, the colours seemed to really zing against such a dark background - so dark grey it was.
I wanted to make this a totally hand sewing project so decided to big-stitch hand quilt the entire thing... during the hottest summer the UK has known for years! Haha! I echo quilted within each of the EPP shapes and then around the rings, and then added some replica motifs in the negative spaces which I left unquilted.
I was very chuffed to see the quilt on display at Festival and had some really wonderful comments from the judges and visitors, thank you!
I can't wait to see all the other wonderful quilts on display, though it may take me a while, please be patient with me!
Linking up with Let's Bee Social, Midweek Makers and Needle & Thread Thursday.
Have you sat down to start a new quilt, fabric all chosen and pressed, tools and equipment all set up and ready to go, then you read the instructions and you have to cut a million WOF strips? Well not a million maybe, but enough to for your heart to sink. Well, I wanted to share the quick and accurate method I used for cutting over thirty 1" strips to make my new version of my Mosaic Garden Quilt, kit coming soon.
By using the full width of your quilter's ruler and moving that instead of the fabric every time, you're able to cut a lot quicker, believe me! You can see my full tutorial here.
The quilt above is just waiting to get quilted - I have something special planned for this baby, so watch this space.
Amy over at Amy's Creative Side is holding her annual Blogger's Quilt Festival, this online event is a great opportunity for quilters to enter their favourite creations of the past 12 months in this virtual competition, and for us to be inspired by and vote for these truly stunning quilts. I have decided to enter my Blueberry Park Lone Star wall hanging which was featured in Quilt Now magazine a few months ago.
This was probably the start of my love affair with English paper-piecing, and these fabrics by Karen Lewis just bring the star alive! Please go and visit Amy's post, enjoy and be inspired.
I know I said I'd be away this week, I got my dates wrong, so there will now not be a blog next week!
Linking up with Let's Bee Social, Midweek Makers and Needle & Thread Thursday
