A Hint of Summer from John Louden

Once a year I am asked to design and make a collection of quilt samples for fabric company John Louden & Co. Based in Leeds, this third generation family company sells a huge selection of apparel and craft fabric throughout the UK and Europe. In the quilting world, they’re probably currently best known for their gorgeous Scandi Christmas range which includes cute reindeer and penguins and festive stars and hearts in red or blue on a soft calico base.

Even though Christmas is thankfully way off, I thought a wall hanging would show off these Scandi designs well and that large baubles would make the most of the featured animals in each of the fabrics, and of course they just had to be hexagon baubles! Each one is attached with Bondaweb, then machine appliquéd and quilted with blanket stitch.

The other fabric collections I had to work from were far more summery, in particular this Summer Pastels range, from which I made a lap quilt/wall hanging and a table runner. 

The A Summer Bouquet lap quilt is based on a favourite technique of mine, the stitch-and-flip method used to make snowball or half-snowball blocks. I particularly like how the two plain blues used in the corner triangles seem to pop out. The A Wave to Summer table runner was made using a wedge ruler, and rather than going round in a circle, every ten wedges I flipped the next one to make them go in the other direction, hence creating a wave-like design.

The next range, the lovely Trailing Vine collection, has some directional issues! This one took some thinking about, and after a while I came up with this four-pointed star that I thought, with some careful fabric placement, could emphasise the directional nature of the vines. This range actually comes in nine colours in both negative and positive colourways, but I decided to stick to purple, pink, green and grey to create this foundation-pieced Star Jumps lap quilt. I then had some fun with free-motion quilting in the negative spaces.

 

The final collection, and possibly my favourite, is Pretty Posies which comes in four colours, again in both negative and positive colourways. I decided to take the blue and red, together with the same blue and red from Trailing Vine and make this very Americana looking table runner. Not only are the colours reminiscent of the American flag, but I think the small squares in this half Trip Around The World pattern evoke memories of old hand-pieced quilts made by the pilgrims on their search for a better life.

 

Each of these patterns and fabric collections will be available at your nearest Louden stockist, for more information, contact John Louden.

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This week I'm linking up with Sew Fresh Quilt's Let's Bee Social and Needle And Thread Thursday over at My Quilt Infatuation - come and be inspired!