It's Judy"s Fault

One of our customers showed me a picture of a quilt that she liked and asked if I knew how to make the block.  I knew I had it in one of my reference books so I told her I would dig it out while she was away as she was off on an overseas trip a few days later so I knew there was no rush.  But it is autumn after all ----- so when I got home I started flicking through my books, found the pattern, got out the graph paper and worked out how it was constructed.  Then the following Sunday I thought "I should make a block so I can show Judy how to make it when she gets home".
I have been organizing my scraps a la Bonnie Hunter for several years so it was a simple matter of going through the drawers with the right size strips and picking out autumn toned fabrics.  I had a lovely afternoon playing with colours and trying to decide on brown, orange, gold, beige or red.  Then I thought "what the heck, I'll just make one in each colour".

By the end of the day I had five blocks cut out and had drawn up the diagram for a table runner and cut out the borders as well.  That night I appliqued the stems and the next day I pieced the blocks and stitched the border piano keys together.  By the end of the week the runner was together and I had it pinned ready to quilt.  With simple straight line quilting, by the end of the following week it was bound and finished and when three customers asked for the pattern, I wrote it up, typed it out and am in the process of making up the pattern.  So it's all Judy's fault because she made me do it.

I forget sometimes how effective traditional pieced blocks can be for simple items to decorate your home especially to celebrate the changing seasons and holiday times.

Until next time

Happy stitching

from Therese.

Old Favourites

These quilts are some of my favourite old designs. "Pretty 'n' Pink" was the first in pretty fabrics.  Then one day I realised that pink wouldn't suit everyone so I needed to consider other colours. 

That led me to create "Lavender Hill" using any fabric print in the shop that had the slightest bit of purple or mauve in it. I also put a lot more stitching in this quilt too.

 Next came "My Blue Heaven" (see my post from December 18th last year) and then "Peaches and Cream".  I still love these type of quilts with that combination of traditional pieced blocks, pretty applique and simple stitching.  I hope they are as fun for other people to sew as they were for me to design.

The patterns are still available for all of these quilts and just keep selling all the time which is nice for me too.

So until next time,

Happy stitching from Therese.