Etsy AllisonsPatchworks

UFO Quilt finish: ‘Black Coffee in Bed’

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Black Coffee in Bed was declared ‘finished’ a few weeks ago but didn’t get recorded here on the blog as the weather was all wrong for taking photos and then we went on holiday…

So, belated drum rolls…. The finished quilt unveiled:

Me and ‘Black Coffee in Bed’ have a story stretching over at least six years! There was a long period when the completed quilt top, pieced back and wadding all resided in the UFO Cupboard of Shame. A fear my quilting would spoil all the hard work that had gone into piecing the patchwork held me back. Anyhow, growing confidence thanks to a sewing machine upgrade and the determined subduing of a perfectionist mindset enabled me to drag the UFO out of the cupboard, back into daylight.

I made a label (see first photo above) before getting down to basting and quilting the caffeine monster. After a using a walking foot to stitch in the ditch around the blocks I switched to a free motion set up, quilting a meander pattern in the setting triangles before stitching a series of vertical waving lines with swirls (to represent the steam rising from a cup of freshly poured coffee) through the blocks; then back to the walking foot to stitch a broad twisted ribbon design through the piano key borders.

 

 

 

 

The coffee themed ‘Java’ fabrics were designed by Deb Strain for Moda. I think this may have been my first Jelly Roll quilt. The quilt measures 81″ x 64″ and is now available to buy from my Etsy Shop, AllisonsPatchworks.

Linking with Michelle for the Beauties Pageant and Alycia for Finished or Not Friday. Michelle is doing a bit of that ‘Christmas in July’ thing and Alycia is making masks in readiness for College (or not!). Both link-ups provide lots of inspiration from quilters around the world 🙂

Allison

I-Spy Shadow Quilt Pattern and Novelty Fabric Packs

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I-Spy Shadow Quilt (with feet!)

I-Spy quilts are such a fun idea! A quilt is a lovely gift for a child: a warm comforting wrap, a picnic blanket, a magic carpet, a den – a child’s imagination will take that quilt and make it more than the maker could ever have dreamed! An I-Spy quilt can be all those things and a ready-made game too. Novelty fabrics pieced together make a perfect, portable ‘board’ for playing games of ‘I-Spy with my little eye’. All the family can join in, honing observation skills, extending vocabulary and developing letter-sound recognition. Play on the sofa, on a bed, on the floor, in the garden or in a car.

Am I selling the notion of I-Spy quilts to you? 😀

I-Spy with my little eye…. something beginning with S:

Snail? Seahorse? See anymore? 😉

I designed the I-Spy Shadow Quilt with forty-two novelty squares seeming to float above the quilt casting shadows on the background. I love the illusion made by placement of light and dark fabrics across the quilt top. The pattern is available to purchase as a PDF download from my Etsy shop, AllisonsPatchworks.

The pattern uses strip-piecing to speed up the cutting and piecing of this quilt. If you are not familiar with strip-piecing, don’t worry it’s all explained in the pattern. With very few seams to match and no sashing strips to line-up, this quilt can be made by a patchwork quilter with basic skills: able to follow a pattern, use a rotary cutter and stitch consistent quarter inch seams.

And the quilt details:

 

The pattern requires 42 novelty fabric squares. It can take quite a lot of time and effort to source that many fabrics – ask me how I know 😉 A pack of 5″ novelty fabric squares would be handy wouldn’t it? Well! What-do-you-know? Take a look in my ETSY shop, AllisonPatchworks, and you’ll find packs of 21 or 42 novelty squares, sorted, cut and ready to piece. The packs of 21 squares include UK postage and cost £8.50 each. The packs of 42 squares include UK postage and cost £15 each.

Find the I-Spy Shadow Quilt Pattern and the novelty squares fabric packs at my ETSY Shop, AllisonsPatchworks.

Allison

 

Baby Quilt Finish and Pattern Release

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I’m very pleased to have finished the ‘Four Patch Dash’ baby quilt. 🙂 I designed this little quilt with speed in mind – hence the ‘dash’ in the title! The pattern PDF is now available to purchase and download from my Etsy store, AllisonsPatchworks.

The design is fat quarter friendly, using five fat quarters for the four patch blocks with some extra yardage for the borders. Definitely a quilt that can be quickly put together using stash fabrics!

I used a sea creature print fat quarter as the feature fabric of my quilt. The colours in the print helped in the choosing of four plain fat quarters from my stash.

In the pattern I have given instructions to cut fat quarters into long rectangles. These are used to strip piece the four patch blocks. Strip piecing saves a lot of cutting and time and helps with accuracy too. If you’d rather be using up scraps than using fat quarters, there is a cutting chart and instructions for making the blocks using individual squares.

To make the quilt sandwich, I pieced a backing (including the label) and used a piece of soft, easy care Quilter’s Dream Green wadding. To keep with the sea theme of the feature fabric I decided on simple ‘watery’ looking quilting designs. The wavy lines across the four patch blocks were stitched using a walking foot and a 40wt variegated Aurifil thread, 3817. In the borders I free motion stitched a ripple design using a 50wt Aurifil thread, 6724, which blends well with the unbleached calico. I used the same ripple design on a smaller scale to quilt the feature fabric blocks.

The quilt finished at 39″ x 39″ and used 5 Fat Quarters plus a yard of fabric for the front and half a yard for the binding. Backing and wadding were cut to 46″ x 46″ before trimming.

All finished with a blue/green binding. This was hand stitched to the back after my failed experiment with a different binding technique! I will give that technique another try but with wider binding..

Here is the Four Patch Dash quilt in a different colourway:

That’s the story of this little quilt! The pattern is now available as a PDF download from my Etsy store. I’m very happy to provide a 20% discount to readers of this blog as a thank you for your friendly and encouraging support :-). Use the code FOURPATCH or this link: https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/AllisonsPatchworks?coupon=FOURPATCH

Offer ends Thursday 4th June.

Allison

Saturday Quilting Bring and Share (84)

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Welcome to Saturday Quilting Bring & Share 🙂 Bring along your project(s) and share in some of the news, views and inspiration doing the rounds of the Worldwide Quilting Community. Do join in the sharing by clicking on the links and using the comments box at the end of this page. There’s an email subscription box too if you’d like to keep track of my blog posts week by week.

It’s been a funny old week for me. My husband has been away for six nights on a business trip – to the Caribbean would you believe! He arrived home safely on Friday morning – it was -1ºC when his plane landed at Gatwick, the day before he’d flown out of Antigua after enjoying a swim in temperatures nearing 30ºC!

Seven days and six nights home alone…! I coped but I wouldn’t like to have to do it too often. For a start I struggle to eat properly when I’m on my own – so tempting to have a few slices of toast rather than preparing vegetables and

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