Blogger's Quilt Festival : Field Study Triangles (Throw Quilt)

If you are visiting from the festival then a huge welcome to this comfy corner of the blogosphere! I am a Brit living with my family in N.Africa and I have been quilting for about 3 years.

A triangle quilt has been floating toward the surface of my bucket list for a while now.  I love colour and dense saturated colour at that! When I was thinking about how I could best show off my beautiful FQs of Anna Maria's Field Study, I plumped for 6" triangles.

So a few weeks ago on a dreary afternoon and completely on a whim, I cut up my treasured 24 FQs in to lots and lots of equilateral triangles.  I didn't use a special ruler - I just used this tutorial.

I then randomly pieced them together. No solids. No negative space. Just a riot of colour and designs in pinks, purples, mustard, orange, greens, blues and brown and not forgetting a little leopard print - the way Anna Maria Horner does best.

Did I mention this is a quilt for me? Oh okay, perhaps I'll let the family have a snuggle!  I know it will be used, loved and appreciated. So I went for something pretty special for the backing; I used a gorgeous Loulouthi voile - so soft and luxurious, which I found for a bargain $6 a yard.  The burnt orange and duck egg blue Coreopsis flowers are beautiful and work perfectly with the front!

I used Dream Orient for the backing - it was the first time I had used it and it is gorgeous - a mix of bamboo, silk, cotton and botanic tencel (a man made fibre from wood pulp apparently) and it gives the most perfect drape and is super soft.

When it came to quilting, I realized I was running low on thread! Living where I do, it's impossible to buy good quality thread locally. Luckily, I didn't want the quilting to be too dense as I wanted to maintain the softness of the quilt. So I reckoned I had just enough of some taupe Gutermann thread to quilt it in vertical lines 1 1/2" apart and then go over every other line with a wavy line.  I did but only just!

I love all things blue at the moment and so bound it in Amy Butler's Folly in zinc from her Cameo line.

A couple of days ago I finished the quilt - just in time for the festival!

It measures 62" x 73" and it's being suspended here by my 5 year old son!

Unusually, it was a dull and miserable day here yesterday but the quilt definitely added some colour!

Thanks as ever to Amy for hosting this fabulous bi-annual event.

Reasons to be Cheerful...Part 3

*There's still time to enter the SMS giveaway here*

Welcome to my new followers! I'm so happy you clicked one of the buttons and hope you'll like what you see and stick around.

Perhaps I got out of bed the wrong side this morning but ask my husband, my mum or my newly turned 5 year old son and they'll all tell you I've been in a bit of a funk today. There were reasons but I won't bore you with them!

After having a whinge of mammoth proportions to anyone who would listen, I turned the aircon on and basted my Field Study triangles quilt. The backing arrived last night and I love it! It was silly price Loulouthi voile which I bought in a recent Pink Castle sale and it is super soft, silky and just well lovely and far prettier in real life. Now I just have to decide how to quilt it - straight line echoing I imagine!

Then as if the universe knew I needed cheering up, I found my copy of Hand Quilted with Love by Sarah Fielke lying next to the gate having been thrown over it by the postie. A quick flick through and my eyes widened on seeing this quilt. This was one of two quilts that Sarah was making for a very special person and her daughter, and I contributed blocks! You can read about it and see my blocks here.

My mum also sent me this picture of her presenting the Patchwork Wheel quilt made by the members of the Care Circle, do.Good Stitches to the local representative of  Project Linus UK. It made me smile to see it finally going on its journey to a new home.

Lastly, if that wasn't enough reason to get out of my funk I only have to look at this little one who turned 5 on Tuesday and I smile.

Whinge over.Thank you for listening. Off to look at my new book!

Sticking to the Point

...or perhaps I should say - trying not to stitch over more than 300 of them!

Last Thursday, on a whim, I decided to cut in to my precious FQs of Anna Maria Horner's Field Study. Triangles it would be.  There was slashing and slicing and A LOT of triangles and no solids...no sashing.
Today, I finished the top.  It measures 60" x 73"

Some of the points are good. Are they all perfect? No.

Will I lose any sleep over them? No. This one is for me and I won't be checking any points when I'm snuggling underneath it.

There will be a brief hiatus while I order batting and wait for this backing fabric to arrive from Pink Castle - some Loulouthi Coreopsis voile, which will make it soft and very snuggly. Well at $6 a yard it would have been rude not to.

It was fun piecing the triangles but sewing the numerous strips together wasn't so joyous.  Needles lost their lives as did pins.  Thanks to Fiona and Collette for encouraging me not to trim the triangles - it certainly helped matching points much easier.

I love this quilt top and it's fun to have ticked another off the bucket list.

The First Cut is the Deepest

I admit I was feeling a little overwhelmed this morning. You know how you start something and wonder whether you have bitten off more than you can chew?

You see 2 days ago I started something new...well I'd been so good the last few months...finishing up a few UFOs.  I'd been itching to cut in to my Field Study FQs for some weeks but couldn't decide what to do. I wanted the quilt to be dense with the patterns and little or no solids.  I had almost made my mind up to do a simple square patchwork quilt but an equilateral triangle quilt had been floating near the top of my bucket list for a while and I couldn't get the idea out of my head.

I took my 24 FQs of Field Study and cut it in to 6" strips so that I could get the max out of each piece. After quite a while working out exactly which was the 60° angle on my ruler, I cut...and cut...and really got my equilateral triangle vibe on until I had this 4 1/2" high pile of triangles. I followed Adrianne's excellent tutorial for cutting equilateral triangles here.

So this morning I followed Adrianne's advice and started trimming them - this really helps to avoid bulk when sewing them together...and I can pretend I have a Sizzix Big Shot (other fabric cutters are available).

...and made a slight dent in the pile until I had these pretties. As you can see, I have quite a few more to do.

So I couldn't resist making up a few strips to see whether they would look as I envisioned them together...

...and much to my relief they do! I used Adrianne's second tutorial here. They sew together really easily and while I didn't pin, I did follow her tip to find the straight grain before doing so as the strips don't then warp.

I'm feeling much less overwhelmed now.  I know I can sew them together and I love how they look. I'm excited about this quilt!

Any Suggestions?

After the euphoria of finishing a quilt so early in the new year, my mind turned to starting something new.  Perhaps using these...

...my 24 FQs of Anna Maria Horner's Field Study.  I bought one of the colourways in the sale from Pink Castle (I think) just before Christmas and my mum bought me another colourway for Christmas. I love AMH's designs and saturated colours and these fabrics make me very very happy.

Perhaps you can help with what to do with them and what solid would work well with them...if I was indeed to use a solid.  I like the idea of just letting the fabric sing, so perhaps simple squares or strips, clamshells or a plus quilt or a swoon...I have had the pattern for ages but done nothing with it? If I do use a solid, it won't be white. So what do you think?

Since returning to Morocco, I have been working on my bee blocks and I still have a few to do.

This month,  Nicole in the Sew Euro Bee An bee asked for 2 X and Plus blocks using grey and black fabrics with an accent colour - red in one...

...and orange in the other

In the mystery round robin bee, Stitch Tease, Hadley asked for a 10"x 60" strip of rectangles and squares in aqua, green, teal, orange and grey with some white for the eye to rest on.  I can only show you a pixelated version as these quilts won't be revealed until April. That's 6 strips down, just 2 to go!

Now the next bee block is very embarrasing.  The EEEEP EPP Bee, an English paper piecing bee, is a very relaxed bee (perhaps too relaxed) with a 2 month trunaround for blocks and back in September Helen requested 2 HST blocks which turned out to be cursed as far as I was concerned.  First, Helen's templates and Kona snow got lost in the post and having no Kona snow I ordered some. Then I was half way through the block and spilled coffe over it. Then there was Christmas and so finally I got to make the first block again (no coffee this time) and it's too big and I'm running out of Kona snow! Gah.

Thank you to Helen who has been so incredibly patient. So next up is trying this block again and trying to get it the right size!