I’ve given myself a bit of colour bother! I went for a pick-n-mix tour of my local quilt store. I picked a fabric from the ‘Fantasy’ collection by Sally Kelly. I chose to mix it with a print from the Wildflower collection by Kelly Ventura.
The Fantasy fabric has a variety of dusky colour shades on a dusky lavender/grey background – I tried to find a colour match on a Kona colour card but can’t find one – something between Kona Lavender and Slate. The fantastical flowers and foliage are coloured in shades amongst others, of salmon, orange and pink. Three colours I have difficulty putting together despite them being adjacent to one another on
We have thoroughly enjoyed a family outing to Micheldever Wood, Hampshire. The Wood, between our home town and the county town of Winchester, is famed for the beautiful carpets of bluebells spread out below a canopy of fresh green beech leaves.
Walking through the bluebells brought to mind the children’s song ‘In and out the dusty bluebells’.
Theories about the origins of the song are varied. The first documented record of it is from 1898 but the song must pre-date that by several if not many, many years. The song may have been a warning against wandering alone among enchanting bluebells as the magical beauty of the woods would rouse the Fairy King who spirited away trespassers. Alternatively the ‘master’ may have referenced the hiring fairs where labourers were employed for the year by a tap on the shoulder (although this type of hiring happened more usually in the Autumn rather than the Spring) or the ‘master’ may have been Death himself tapping his victims from behind – this could date the song back to the plagues of Medieval times. Strange how many of our seemingly innocent nursery rhymes and playground songs have originated from folklore or dark times in history. There is an interesting article about the myths surrounding bluebells on the History Girls website.
Thankfully we can use the gasp-out-loud beauty of bluebell woods to bring to mind the Creator, and enjoy the peace a simple colour palette infused with the hope of fresh beginnings brings to heart, mind and soul.
Welcome to Saturday Quilting Bring & Share. I hope you have time to be creative this weekend. Bring your project(s) along and share in some of the inspiration to be found in our Worldwide Quilting Community. If you’d like to add your ideas and thoughts into the mix then please do make use of the Comments box at the bottom of this page or join in with a comment on any of the pages you click on and visit. Thank you!
I must admit to feeling a tad tired today after a busy couple of weeks. There have been some unexpected days of work at Purple Stitches, some hours of sleep lost to noisy weather along with the general upheaval and rearranging that go with decorating a bedroom. Being involved in such a varied mix of activities after all the months of slow, steady predictability have caught up with me! Thankfully I have some restful, straightforward cutting and piecing to keep me occupied over the weekend.
First there were the September blocks of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2020 to complete. Nice surprise here when I found all the 2½” squares cut and ready to piece. A bit scary that I have no recollection of cutting the squares from
My Quilter’s Color Quest quilt is finished! I have so enjoyed learning about colour by reading Rachel Hauser’s book, ‘A Quilter’s Field Guide to Color’. Working through the challenges presented in the book and via the Quilter’s Color Quest has helped me gain a better understanding of my own colour and fabric preferences. I feel much more confident about choosing fabrics, understanding much better why I’m drawn to some rather than others but also how to incorporate fabrics I might have rejected in the past into my future projects.
The Bear Paw blocks were such a pleasure to make. I decided to piece my 59 blocks into an on-point layout with narrow sashing to separate the blocks. I used unbleached calico for the background, all the Bear Paw fabrics were lurking in my stash or scrap bins.
The backing fabric was a gift brought back from a trip to SE Asia. I had to cut the length in half and join selvage edges together to make a piece the right width for the backing. I still can’t quite believe I managed to match up the two pieces of fabric so well – the seam is hardly visible, even if I do say so myself 😀
At 51″ by 71″ the quilt was a comfortable size to fit through Julie the Juki. I used a Hera Marker to establish the initial quilting lines across the pin basted quilt sandwich. One gently wavy line across the centre and another intersecting it were enough to begin the process of stitching out the wavy grid design. I used a walking foot with the line guide set to 2″ to make sure the echoed stitching lines were evenly spaced.
In the bobbin I used a light brown Aurifil 40wt thread, 2314, which blended well with the backing fabric. I chose a varigated Aurifil 40wt thread, 3817, for the top to give some colour to the plain calico setting triangles at the end of each row of blocks.
To finish the quilt I made a scrappy binding, machine stitching it to the back before folding it to the front and machine stitching it down. I also made a label, this time stitching it into the binding before hand stitching the other two edges in place. (Here’s the link to a label making tutorial I shared earlier this year).
Last night a storm blew up, I crept downstairs, lifted the Bear Tracks and Big Dottie quilts from the sofas and laid them on top of our inadequate summer duvets. Perfect! We were quickly warm enough to go back to sleep! Makes me think I need to make a full size quilt for our bedroom… 😀
Linking this rare finish of mine with Michelle for the Beauties Pageant, Wendy for the Peacock Party and Alycia for Finished or Not Friday. As an introduction to Down Syndrome Awareness Month Michelle gives a beautiful account of being the parent of a child with the condition.
