"Felicity" in Paisley Park

I hope that you have been following along with the Island Batik Getaway Blog Hop - it's great fun to see the quilts, and the prizes are pretty fabulous, too!
My day to post is not until the 23rd of this month, but I had opportunity last fall to sew today's featured fabric collection, "Paisley Park" and this seemed an appropriate time to share the details.

I chose to work with these colours as I felt they would shine in this design. Aren't they gorgeous?

It's always fun to pull out my Aurifil threads to match and contrast with the fabrics.  I used both 40 and 50 weights for the quilting, as well as clear monofilament to ditch the seams.

 The table set is for a runner and matching placemats.  I love the unusual shape formed from the contours of the block.  The size is perfect for under a dinner plate.

The set was displayed in the Island Batik booth at fall International Quilt Festival in Houston and is now travelling with a trunk show to various quilt shops.

The pattern makes a terrific workshop project, as it features strip-piecing, gentle curved seaming, foundation piecing, a Y seam, and binding of inner and mitred corners all in a do-able sized project. I've had feedback from several enthusiastic instructors telling me this was their favourite class ever, with so many teachable points to cover.

Quilt shops may order the pattern wholesale from their Island Batik rep, or directly from me.  Individual patterns can be ordered in print from my website, or downloaded at this link.
I hope you will visit Island Batik Ambassadors Dionne and Nancy who have also used this collection in their projects. They've got some terrific surprises waiting at the links below:

Wednesday, January 16 - Paisley Park

Dione Gardner-Stephen- Clever Chameleon

Nancy Scott- Masterpiece Quilting

To Market, To Market...

The annual trek to Quilt Market in Houston has begun and, although I will not be making the trip, I am thrilled that one of the projects I made for Island Batik will be there!  My Felicity Table Runner and Placemats, pieced in the new "Paisley Park" collection will be in the Island Batik booth.

I am very pleased to be featured as one of their designers in the 2018 Fall and Winter Catalogue.

Paisley Park is a gorgeous collection, and I enjoyed working with these rich, vibrant colours very much.  The pattern makes a great workshop piece, as it uses strip-piecing, curved seaming, and foundation piecing in a manageable sized project.  The pattern is distributed by Island Batik, so if you are in Houston, stop by their booth to order the pattern for your shop.

 You can check out the entire catalogue here.

Counting Our Blessings

Our garden has provided us with much delicious produce this season.  Even today, we harvested pole beans, peas, tomatoes and zucchini for our supper.  It was fun to pull out some scraps in fall colours for a new table runner.  I decided to use my Felicity pattern, as even though it was designed in the spring, the base of the fan always reminded me of a cornucopia.  I fussy words for the centres:  Hope, Family, Peace, Friends, Give Thanks, and Counting Our Blessings.

 I quilted swirls and scrolly leafy shapes using Aurifil 50 weight thread in green, gold, and natural.

My Grandmother made the little pumpkin in a senior's ceramics class many, many years ago and it's always part of our fall decor.

You can download the pattern here.

Felicity

Welcome Spring with this simple table runner and placemat set.

 Shown here in Lewis & Irene's "Spring Hare" (available at Mrs. Pugsley's Emporium).

This one is stitched in Nancy Halvorsen's "Forever Spring" collection from Benartex.

Download the pattern here.

Felicity Table Runner

It's here! No not spring, but something to remind us it's coming!  This is the new design I have been working on.  It's called Felicity.

The fabrics are a sweet new collection from Lewis & Irene - a British company - called Spring Hare. Though the prints do feature bunnies, the look really is more like 30's fabrics. Such a soft palette is not something I normally work with, but I have enjoyed these...and they go great with my china!

The batting is Tuscany silk, which is perfect for a table set as it isn't thick or lumpy, yet it allows nice definition to the quilting and lets the stitching show.

It's rather simply done, mostly continuous curves with a few feathers thrown in for good measure.

 The runner measures 12-1/2" x 33-1/4", and the pattern includes instruction for matching placemats.

That mischievous middle bunny kept sniffing the flowers.

I had fun trying out different dishes for the photo shoot.  The Peter Rabbit ones were perfect, as is this well-worn cutlery set of a cow, pig and chicken.

It looks equally inviting with my Tranquility china; all the colours are there.  Would you like to come for tea?

I stitched a sample placemat to try out the fit of the templates, as well as to audition the quilting stitches.  This one uses a double layer of wool batting so you can really see the stitches pop.

The exciting part is that Mrs. Pugsley's Emporium in Amherst, Nova Scotia carries the full line of Spring Hare fabrics in her shop, and a kit (including the pattern) to make this set is available exclusively from Mrs. Pugsley's! Details will be posted on her site soon.

If you would just like the pattern by itself, it is available for purchase locally at Mrs. Pugsley's Emporium, through my website, or as an instant download here.

Hopping Along With The Spring Hare

We are hopping right along with the runner in the Spring Hare collection.  The piecing is complete and I had fun choosing threads for the quilting.  I am by no means a thread snob - I love it all, and have a huge variety of weights, colours and brands on hand.  The bobbin thread is a 100 weight (i.e. very fine) Wonderfil Invisifil.  For the quilting, I chose 5 different colours:  a pink/cream variegated by Sulky, a solid yellow Konfetti by Wonderfil, a pale blue cotton Gutermann, a silver/white Aurifil variegated, and a green variegated Gutermann which I've had since Moses was a baby. That Gutermann was the first time I had seen variegated sewing thread in a store, and in my excitement, I bought all of it, in all the colourways - the entire thread display!  It was my first experience hoarding thread...(sadly not my last...:))  I have two spools of the green left, and one of a Christmas red/white/green.  It was a well-loved investment!

I picked up this pink Sulky at The Quilt Gallery in O'Leary last summer and have been itching to use it.  It has the perfect blend of shades from dark pink to cream to work with the blades in the fan blocks.

It was a tad heavier than the rest - a 30 weight - but I liked the effect.  It was like embroidering small scrolls.

Because of all the variation in thread thickness between my top and bobbin threads, it was necessary to adjust the top tension with each thread so that my stitches were perfect.  I am always amazed at how reluctant students are to do this!  For the 30 weight pink thread, I had to call on the bobbin case's secret weapon - I call it a stitch finger, I have no clue what it's really named.  Not all machines have one, but if they do, it's a wonderful help to proper tensioning.  You can see I've simply run my bobbin thread through the tiny hole at the top of the finger before inserting the bobbin back in the case.  It tightens up the bottom thread just a tiny bit - way easier than moving the screw.  

The quilting is almost finished up, so I will show you the rest soon.

Spring Hare

When the calendar says "March", we all automatically think "spring" (despite the fact that outside my window I can see it is snowing again!)  Last week, I picked up this new collection of fabrics by Lewis & Irene at Mrs. Pugsley's Emporium.  It's called Spring Hare.

Some of those bunnies gambling about look a bit like chocolate *-)

I've got a new design for a tablerunner and place mats which needed spring colours. I love the shade of blue - kind of like a robin's egg.  It may be awhile before we see any robin eggs around here in real life though!