Sometimes You Just Need a Reminder...

...of home.  While Morocco is clearly my home (it should be after 9 years), I can`t help feeling homesick for the sceptered isle from time to time. I nearly booked a ticket to go back for a week when my mum leaves on Saturday but in the end I didn`t. I made a cushion cover instead and saved the air ticket for a trip back over the holidays in December.

Union flag cushion in Amy Butler fabrics

Back in February, when I had only been blogging for a couple of weeks, I made this Union flag block using some lovely Amy Butler Love fabrics. Yes, yes I know.  It`s pink and green.  Quelle surprise!

At the time I wasn`t sure what I was going to do with it...I wasn`t sure whether to frame it and stick it on the wall or make it in to a cushion cover.  Today, a mere eight months later (did I ever mention I was indecisive?) it became the front of a cushion cover.

I straight line quilted it...

...and backed it in this zingy green fabric.  It is the twin of this Disappearing 9 Patch cushion.

A couple of Fridays ago, Julie at The Intrepid Thread was having a very silly 20 per cent off everything sale for 24 hours. To feed my fabric addiction, I ordered 11 fat quarters of Heirloom by Joel Dewberry in the sapphire colourway.   Today, the lovelies arrived.

Linking up with Sew Modern Monday - go on, hop on over and have a look at what creative people there are out there. Tsk. As if you didn`t know.

Work in Progress

The old lady is certainly earning her keep - over the last couple of days she has helped me make this union flag quilt top which my lovely friend Deborah commissioned me to make for her daughter Elicia. 

It wasn`t as easy as I thought using the Liberty fabrics she had chosen - they are beautifully soft but very slippery.

I used the same pattern as I used here.  That quilt was hand pieced and hand quilted.  This one will be machine quilted and it will have a 12" border in a beautiful silk fabric, which I have yet to wash.   I plan to put it in the machine on a silk wash with a mild detergent but I`m a little worried about drying it....any tips? For the backing, it will be made up of panels using the silk and some of the Liberty fabrics too - just because they are so lovely and will help prevent the quilt sliding off the bed!

I would like to get the quilt finished next week so that I can post it to Deborah in Paris before I leave for Morocco. My Ryanair allowance won`t stretch to taking it home!

Hope you have plans for a great weekend!

Enough is Enough

So today I finished the Union flag cushion cover front using the pink and green Rowan fabrics.  It measures 13"x13" and on the whole I'm pleased with how it's turned out.  I may put a border round it.  I may not. I do like the fact that it's not immediately obvious that's it's a flag design because the 3 fabrics used have such a similar colour palette.  It was a little fiddly though (for me) and I now know that I prefer larger and more gutsy pieces to work with.

Pastels Union flag block

Detail

Hmmm. I'm not entirely convinced that it will become a cushion cover.... I may just stick some glass over it and frame it! What I do know is that's it.  No more Union flag quilts, cushion covers, hangings....or anything - at least for the time being.  I'm moving on...

I'm a Quilter Not a Quitter

Detail of Union flag quilt

A year or so ago I found myself languishing; it had been a tough few months - my second career had hit the buffers and there was nothing new on the horizon. Watching too much daytime television I was feeling a sense of frustration. My intuitive mother had noticed - even though we were separated by seas, oceans and mountains . It was during one of our regular phone calls that she suddenly declared, "What you need is a project!" A couple of weeks later a parcel arrived in the post - a beautiful Moda Arcadia layer cake and a "wedding cake" quilt pattern, as well as a rotary cutter, ruler, cutting mat, sharps and thread. Everything I needed to begin my 'new project'.

With a renewed sense of vigour, I studied the pattern. And studied the pattern. I was daunted. Did the pattern include seam allowances or not? Hmm. What was I to do? I'd lost so much confidence that I was baffled by a straightforward quilting pattern. Should I cut up this beautiful and expensive material and risk losing the whole thing? Or make something simpler? I plumped for the latter and decided to make a small quilt for my young son and one which could be used as a lap quilt when he grew bigger. The blocks were simple - approximately 10"x10" made up of three rectangles. It was then that I started a new chapter in my life. I started to make my first quilt.

A few months later, my husband and I went out to dinner with our good friends to celebrate a birthday. Their teenage daughter was with us and bored with the conversation of middle aged parents and friends, she started to flick through the photos on my iphone. She came across pictures of the nearly finished quilt top and cooed enthusiastically. My friend asked, "Could you make us a Union flag quilt?" The answer to such a question was clearly "No". I'd never finished a quilt, let alone such a complicated design as the Union flag. I'd never basted a quilt, I'd never bound a quilt and had limited experience of piecing. "Yes. Of course I can make you one!" I replied.

Mille grazie to Jennifer Klie who has a wonderful pattern for a Union flag quilt at her Etsy shop. With a copy of Quilting for Dummies becoming bedtime reading and a few tutorials on YouTube, I made the first cuts into the stunning pastel fabrics from Tanya Whelan and Amy Butler and 6 months later it was finished. My first quilt. Completely hand pieced and hand quilted. Not one machine stitch, which makes me a quilting purist apparently (the truth actually being that I couldn't find my machine as I'd lent it to my sister in law). It wasn't all plain sailing...there were tantrums along the way ( difficulties cutting out long strips of fabric on a small cutting mat, not following the pattern correctly, completely unpicking the quilting stiches on a quarter of the quilt after deciding they were too close)...but it was all worth it when it was handed over to its new owner and her smiles said that she loved it. But that's not the end of the story is it? What became of 'the project'? The first project that my mother sent me? Well I've returned to it like an old friend but that's for another day. My confidence is back. I didn't quit and I've found out that I can quilt!