1000 flowers

Hello hello. I've been busy today adding the binding onto "1000 flowers", my strippy triangles quilt. Super happy with this whispery palette, inspired by a vintage quilt. 

I may never be a true “modern” quilter or make a quilt from all solids, but you know right, it's all scrappy and all floral around here, and I'm okay with that. 

There really is a great mix of pastel florals in this quilt - Kaffe, Tilda, Outback Wife, a little AMH, and a couple of other nameless brighter bits & bobs from my stash - and I wouldn’t have it any other way. 

This quilt earned a trip to the "quilt spa" for longarm quilting treatment by Leeanne from quiltmekiwi. I asked for edge-to-edge quilting in the Baptist Fan pattern, a real fav of mine and perfect as a wee nod to the original vintage inspiration quilt. For the backing I pieced together a few large strips of grey florals. 

I chose an {oldish} small floral print in plum for my binding, 1000 Henley Flowers from Makower. It seems to contain things nicely ... and draws out all the warm pink colours ... and I 💕the idea of lots & lots of floral fabrics front, back & sides, hence the quilt name!  

Finished quilt measures {approx.} 62" x 56".

Enjoy the photos ... 

- in the afternoon sunshine

- and one final close-up, loving the texture from Leeanne's quilting

Linking up with Cheryl for Favourite Finish in May here

and with Kelly over here for NTT

Until next time, Linda

scrappy trips on the design wall

This past year I’ve done very little fabric purchasing because, like many, I want to use up more of what I have here. And so for ages now, I've been putting all my random leftover strips into a basket, it's overflowing! And I've been waiting for inspiration to hit.

After a little research I found plenty of scrappy quilt ideas using strips (see here for ideas). I decided it was about time for (another) scrappy trip around the world - there are lots of different tutorials and tips for making this quilt, like here at quiltville.

I'm aiming for controlled scrappy... and it's been very interesting. 

My strips are 2 1/2" wide, so smallish really, meaning I have to consider carefully which fabrics I chose to mix up together.  I didn't want the fabrics to all be competing with each other, and I didn't want a lot of large-scale florals, so I've included quite a few quieter no-so-exciting prints. 

After a bit of faffing around, I made up a couple of test blocks using the strip method. However, as you can't really decide how you feel about it until you’re at least 4 blocks in - 'cos the magic happens only after they are put together - I actually swopped over and cut everything into squares and arranged them up on my design wall. 

I'm enjoying working with these softer colours, lots of muddy muted (well, muted for me I guess!) blues, green, greys, tans and neutrals, with little accents in pink & yellow - just channeling my inner @blue elephant stitches with this vintage vibe here!  

a little obsessed

I'm just a little obsessed with kaleidoscope blocks!

Once my whole design wall was covered with twenty blocks (mainly from my Anna Maria Horner stash) 

it was just a quick run up on the sewing machine, and I was done!

Linking up my quilt top finish with Kelly for NTT here

As I was getting this top ready for backing & batting, I decided to add a border, much happier with it now (plus it secures all those fragile edges!) 

And finally, here's a little collage of all my 'kaleidoscope' makes to date ...

Linda