March 18, 2018

Beyond the Garden Gate

Today I wandered around a friend's sweet garden. It was the first time I had seen her little piece of paradise and it was a delight to behold. My favourite part was a big old tree with low limbs. Hanging from it and underneath it were so many beautiful treasures - ferns, orchids and other magnificent flowering plants. It was totally uplifting to spend time amongst such beauty.


Some of that sort of enchantment was what I was trying to capture in my Beyond the Garden Gate quilt.  


The quilt features in the March 2018 issue of Homespun Magazine.


I made the quilt using one of my favourite Quilt-as-you-go methods.


Thee are plenty of my favourite applique elements in it.


The fabric range I used is the delightful Welcome Home Collection One by Jennifer Bosworth.


The beautiful fabrics were totally inspiring. 


Lots of butterflies flit around in my garden.


 ... and here is the garden gate:


with pretty pots nearby.



It has the most beautiful floral fabric in the border.


Seeing that beautiful garden today made me hanker back to the days when I too had a pretty place to enjoy. My garden even won a couple of prizes - a long time ago. But we live in the humid sub-tropics so gardening is hot, hard work, and age has crept up, so I am content to have an easy-care garden and a few ferns. I guess it has been a deliberate choice to put my time and effort into quilting rather than gardening. Maybe I worked out today why there are so many garden elements in heaps of my projects!

Happy stitching!
Val

March 4, 2018

Fruit Salad in a quilt

If you thought I was over the top with my penchant for black (see my last post), you might think I have really gone overboard with my fruit salad quilt!


I really like the jewel-like colours of Eleanor Burns' fabric range, "Forever Love".  I wanted to use the Arbor Window quilt block (aka Granny Square) so decided that this was definitely a case for having a black background, which shows up both the fabric and the piecing so well. 


I talked here about how the blocks were made without having to align any points - my style of piecing since I'm an imperfect piecer!


As I much prefer doing applique to piecing blocks, I did plenty on this quilt.


The fabric colours were so good for depicting various fruits.


One of my favourites below - cherries - both the applique and eating them!


I made this project using the quilt-as-you-go method.


The appliques are all in the borders, so it took a long time to get round the whole quilt!


The grapes took forever, but I am so pleased with the result on the finished quilt. The different fabrics used for the grapes give a really great effect when the quilt is viewed from a distance.


All the above photos were taken before quilting, so here is the finished product:


It's looking very happy in our family room, covering a small pool table.

I'm finished my "black phase" for the moment and am having fun with another quilt with lots of appliques - and an off-white background! It's using a wonderful new Tilda range of fabrics which will be in stores soon. 


Speaking of Tilda fabrics, I have now added the pattern for my "Cottage in the Garden" quilt to my Craftsy Store. A number of folk who don't have access to Australian magazines told me they would like to buy the pattern, so here's the link if that is you!  

Happy stitching!
Val