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!

Dog Gone Cute QAL Complete!

Lorna McMahon of Sew Fresh Quilts is a Canadian quilt designer I have admired from afar for a while now – her Elephant Parade pattern has always been on my to-do list. So when she launched her latest pattern, Dog Gone Cute, with a QAL I just had to join in the fun.

When thinking about the fabrics to use in this beautiful project, I thought I would start with my current favourites, my luscious Kona solids, with white for the dogs and grey as the background… I thought these would look great and very colourful for a child’s wallhanging which was my intention. 

I decided to make up my first block, just to get the hang of the pattern. As I only needed small pieces I raided my scraps from a previous project, and for some reason picked the lighter grey instead of the darker one. As you can see this was a mistake, far too close to the white so that pup loses its outline.

Still, I loved making the block, Lorna’s pattern is so easy to follow, and I love this stitch and flip method - her piecing is just genius!

So then I thought, what about using some patterns instead of solids… and while hunting for some plain pink and black for the ears, eyes and nose, I came across these lovelies from Louden’s Flitsy range that I'd forgotten about – it is scary when you forget what you’ve bought!

So I tried out my first doggy, deciding on the larger block – I was very please with the outcome, isn’t he sweet! Is it sad to cooo and giggle to yourself when sewing… especially when you’re all alone??

Anyway, I then made another two, and laid them out for a wall hanging – but they needed something else…. Since discovering this flip and stitch method, I have been working on some new cushion designs for Christmas, including these two – I live in Middlesbrough if that explains anything… 

....I really enjoyed how the letters came together, so decided to work out a plan for “Dog Gone Cute” to add to my wall hanging. If you would like to add the lettering to your own project, I have the cutting and piecing instructions here.

So once the panel was all pieced together, I had to decide on the quilting… I recently finished a quilt for a new kit with wavy lines across the whole top, and had forgotton how much I love the quilting process, so I decided to have some fun, and as Angela Walters would say, “quilt the life out of it”!

I started with vertical lines on the dogs, just so they would stand out against the rest, then I echo quilted each of the letters. Then came the background, after consulting my FMQ heroines, Angela and Leah Day, I decided on this dense pattern on the top dog. However, I’m sorry to say I actually got a little bored… so I came over all artistic and decided to slowly thin out the quilting lines, turning them into loop-da-loops in the second dog, and then down to simple wavy lines in the last dog. I think it’s worked really well, I hope you agree.

Lorna has been kind enough to share instructions for these gorgeous blocks on her blog, so why not have a go yourself. And if you would like some more inspiration, check out the rest of today's bloggers:

 
Sandy of Upstairs Hobby Room
Heide of Heide’s Quilty Hugs
Britt-Inger of Hill Valley Quilter

Judy of How ART You?

Linking up with Let's Bee Social over at Sew Fresh Quilts, Crazy Mom Quilt's Finish It Up Friday and Free Motion Mavericks - come and say hello!

Sunday Stash #11 – Cider & Fabric

This weekend Hereford held its annual Beer on the Wye Festival, and of course we just had to go, even though its now over 200miles away! As well as some gorgeous beers, particularly an American Pale Ale… there were over 100 ciders and Perrys, most of them made locally. I didn’t manage all of them, but I had a good try! My favourite had to be Weston’s Rhubarb cider, amazing!

Before all this drinking fun however, I indulged in a little fabric fun at Doughty’s – I’d seen these greys online a while ago, and managed to stop myself buying the lot from the website, but when I saw them in person the battle was lost and I gave in. These beauties are from the Flitsy range from John Louden (surprise surprise!) – there are more in the range which I’m sure I’ll end up buying at the Festival of Quilts next month. I’m sure Doughty’s only ask me to work for them knowing I’m going to spend most of my wages on their fabric! 

Mind you, they’re not wrong, and I have a feeling I will be adding to my next purchase quite soon. I have a new love… Riley Blake. These bicycles are so sweet, and with a whole range of co-ordinates and other super cute ranges, there’s no point in even trying to resist!

Now a quick shop update… I have released my sixth quilt pattern, Side to Side, a clever little pattern that will have your friends guessing for ages, it certainly took me a while to work it out! This design uses just two templates, a jewel and a triangle, which with clever placement, creates this zigzag pattern across the quilt. I used some fabrics in my stash from the Je Ne Sais Quoi range, but I think this quilt would also look equally as effective in solid colours.

This pattern, together with five more, is available in both PDF format (£5.95, Etsy) and in Paper format (£6.95, Folksy).

Thank you for stopping by, your comments are always welcome. If you're looking for more fun and inspiration, why not pop over to Molli Sparkles' Sunday Stash link-up?