Finally finished! You might remember the sneak peak of this quilt way back from summer 2009. (Read the post from July 15, 2009)

The pattern is The Gift by Brandon Mably, found in the book, Kaffe Fassett’s Country Garden Quilts. I made this quilt for a book report at my guild. Now I’m not going back to school and presenting you with a formal book report, but I will tell you a few things about Country Garden Quilts: The whole first third of the book is chock full of gorgeous photos of vibrant quilts that look like they just sprouted out of magnificent gardens (set at Great Dixter in Sussex, a 15th-century English manor). It’s enough to just sit back in a comfortable chair and flip through the pages. Pour yourself a glass of lemonade and enjoy!

If you must break out the needle and thread, this book is more than just eye candy. There are clear instructions, great tips, full views of the quilts, alternate colorways and suggestions for quilting. Projects are divided into easy, intermediate and difficult. I really like that with not just one, but a whole team of quilt designers, you get a wide variety of styles to choose from. Mostly pieced, but a bit of applique as well.

I chose The Gift not only because it was so charming, but because it combined fusible applique with the piecing. A little secret: I made my version at half-size, 13.5″x16.5″ because I didn’t want to take the time to find a copy machine and enlarge the pattern pieces. It worked splendidly right out of the book, and the math to reduce the block sizes was quick and easy to do. I included some of the Kaffe fabrics from my stash, as well as some other prints that I thought were in keeping with the overall feel and scale of the original. I hand-quilted it with salmon pink thread like the original, and added hot-fix crystals for a touch of bling.

I wholeheartedly recommend Kaffe Fassett’s Country Garden Quilts, whether for actual quilt-making or simply the sheer beauty of the book.

Speaking of Kaffe quilt books, I’m reminded of Kaffe Fassett Patchwork: Over 25 Glorious Quilt Designs, one of the very first quilt books I ever owned. One of the very first quilted objects I ever made uses several of the quilt blocks from this book as well (including that glorious cover quilt) … but that’s another story for another day.

In it Robbi Joy Eklow, Quilting Arts Magazine’s Goddess of the Last Minute shares her free-motion machine quilting technique and tells how to make 16 fun free-motion quilting designs. She gives many tips as well. My favorite is, “This is not billiards, in which you have to say what you plan to do before you try to do it. If you are striving for a motif and it morphs into another shape, go with it.”

happy quilting (whatever shape it may turn out to be)! =(^_^)=

I love Clement Hurd’s charming illustrations, especially that stylish old phone, the kind with the real dial for dialing (no buttons or voice recognition!) and that wonderful curly cord. As you turn the pages it really does get darker and darker in that quaint little house. Here’s my fabric interpretation of that phone.

I also like the line, “Goodnight nobody. Goodnight mush.” That always made me smile. Hmmm … I wonder what a quilt about mush would look like?

And here’s the back of my quilt. You can really see the quilting. (except nobody’s getting ANY sleep with this noisy phone!) Click here for more great book challenge quilts from my fellow quilters at Fast Friday Fabric Challenge. And browse through your bookshelf or local library for a little quilty inspiration.

Those vegetables have a great color scheme, very warm and inviting. From traditional to folk art to contemporary, all kinds of quilt patterns would look marvelous in these colors (not just food-related ones).

Or get your sketchbook out and draw some veggies. (A farmer’s market would make a great field trip for this.) Detailed, stylized or even abstract. See the circles, half-circles, rectangles, triangles and diamonds in that pan? Make some vegetable appliqué blocks or even some veggie borders.

If the thought of drawing makes you break out in hives, don’t worry. Ruth B. McDowell has a great quilting book, Pieced Vegetables. What’s specially wonderful is that there are patterns for both straight seams and curved seams for all the veggies in Ruth’s book.

I still have that pepper quilt on my mind, and there are 4 different pepper patterns in Pieced Vegetables! The tomato and pumpkin blocks are adorable too. There are a lot of great suggestions for fabric choices and block layouts. Maybe I’ll have to quilt an entire salad! =(^_^)=

Boston Lettuce pattern from Pieced Vegetables by Ruth B. McDowell
made by Violet Vaughnes

Here is one of the blocks I worked on in the class. The pink fabric in the corner is actually not sewn down yet, I just laid it on top for the photo, and unfortunately did not lay it down very accurately. When you do sew the pieces together you really get nice sharp points, as you can see with the yellow points above, which are sewn down.

What’s great about Peggy’s Quick-Strip paper piecing technique is that it really is quick and easy! And you get 3 different methods to choose from to sew the curved lines (something for everybody!). I’ve started 8 blocks but haven’t decided how many there will be in the end.

This is my focus fabric for my New York Beauty quilt, “margarita” from Alexander Henry Fabrics, 2004. I’ve been saving it for just the right quilt. I have enough of it to use in a border and to sprinkle throughout some of the blocks.

Peggy’s trunk show was amazing as well! I love how she uses such a wide variety of colors and fabrics from quilt to quilt. I was fascinated to see how just a single small change to a quilt block (line, color, value, orientation, etc.) makes all the difference in the world in the final quilt’s look and feel. Check out the different looks you can get with the traditional Palm Leaf block. The cover quilt of Quick-Strip Paper Piecing: For Blocks, Borders & Quilts (Peggy’s book with the New York Beauty pattern in it) is one of those quilts you really have to see in person.

Stay tuned for more of my New York Beauty blocks! (and I promise to sew all the pieces together for you next time) =(^_^)=

Anyways, back to Bella Bella, and some much larger paper pieced quilts designed from Italian Mosaic floors.
I liked this Bella Bella quilt because of the black and white.
Here is the same pattern four different ways. One of the most interesting things about taking the workshop was seeing all the different fabrics that people put together. Perhaps I spent a little too much time checking out what other students were doing because here is my Bella Bella quilt.
And I found out after I got home that I’m not even done with the cutting yet. I need to choose one more color for the rainbow stack to make 12 different fabrics. Maybe next month I’ll work on my Bella Bella for 10 minutes every day.

happy quilting!

I’ve decided to try to make one along the way. Above are my first computer sketches (made with Adobe Illustrator software). The top two are from the same half-square-triangle drawing, copied, reflected and rotated, and the bottom two from a second half-square-triangle drawing, also copied, reflected and rotated. On the left are the original triangles that the squares came from.

My plan was to make a pair of Rhapsody Quilts from the same half-square-triangle drawing and hang them together, as their looks are quite different, even though they came from the same drawing. The top pair is interesting on its own, but wouldn’t have as much room as the bottom pair for all the appliqué. For now though, I’ll just start with one and see how it goes. I’m sure it’s a very time-consuming project. As for which one to make first, it will probably be one of the bottom squares. They’re simpler than the top ones, and I don’t have a whole lot of experience with that sort of curved piecing.

If any of you Quilt Show members are inspired, why don’t you try making a Rhapsody Quilt as well.

happy quilting!

So this weekend, inspired by Kumiko Sudo’s wonderful book, Kokoro no Te: Handmade Treasures from the Heart and a glorious sliver of vintage Japanese rayon fabric, here we are: a cell phone pouch fit for a queen! Kumiko’s Camellia Cozy had some wonderful wool felt and silk embellishments, but I couldn’t bear to cover up that much of the fabric, it was perfect as it was, so I simply added a variety of beads for fun. And it fit my phone perfectly, as if she had designed the pattern with my model in mind.

I’d been waiting for well over a year for the right project to use this fabric on as well as most of the beads and the rice pearls. The book I’d only purchased the day before. Kumiko’s books are full of wonderful eye candy. I’ve had Folded Flowers: Fabric Origami with a Twist of Silk Ribbon and Flower Origami: Fabric Flowers from Simple Shapes for several years and never tire of flipping through the pages and admiring her unique take on fiber art. I’d buy anything Kumiko Sudo’s written on the basis of her name alone.