liberty of london hexagon wall quilt

When my husband and I traveled to London in the spring of 2012, a trip to the Liberty of London flagship store was obviously a must on my to-see list. As a souvenir of my visit, I purchased a packet of precut Liberty Tana Lawn hexagons, prepped and ready for English paper piecing.

As I traveled over the next several months (and years!), I stitched together linen-cotton half hexagons, solid white triangles, and those Liberty hexagons (along with a few other floral lawns from my stash). I remember working on this project in North Carolina coffee shops with a friend, as well as in a New York City hotel room during a birthday trip (I vividly remember watching a Downton Abbey season finale while stitching). I'm sure a plane ride or two were in there as well.

The top sat finished for awhile, and was finally basted last fall during a sewing weekend with my mom and a friend. Though I contemplated hand quilting the piece, in the end I machine quilted it with cream thread. I maintained the quilt's angled edges, binding it with bias-tape binding made from American Made Brand's Dark Raspberry, which matched the pink floral backing.

After adding a sleeve to it yesterday, I finally hung it on the wall of our bedroom. What I love so much about English paper piecing is its portability; I can take it wherever I go. As a result, each of those hexagons carry memories of time spent with dear friends, new places, and conversations. This quilt will be treasured for years to come.

Quilt Stats
Finished dimensions: 36.5" x 37"
Fabrics used include: Assorted Tana Lawns by Liberty of London; Essex linen by Robert Kaufman; floral by Denyse Schmidt
Quilt pattern: Salty Oat

P.S. Are you signed up for the Salty Oat newsletter? The second issue went out to subscribers this morning. You can find all past issues here, and sign up for future ones right here.  

P.P.S. And here's the English paper piecing project I was working on while in London.

honeycombs wall quilt

For a dear friend's birthday this month, I stitched up a small wall quilt, using prints by Umbrella Prints from my fabric shop and some scraps of chambray.

Inspired by Betsy's honeycombs, I stitched up my own by hand, using an English paper-piecing technique.

I then machine-appliqued the honeycombs to my quilt top and did echo quilting around the edges.

I stuck with my now-favorite rounded corners, and used up the rest of the binding I had made for this quilt. I used a coordinating vintage blue print for the backing, and I added both a label and a hanging sleeve.

I loved having the chance to work with these prints (they're among my favorites) and I'm happy to report that the birthday girl loved her gift.

architextures mini quilt

Do you ever fall in love with a fabric line and want to use it in all of your projects? That's how I feel about Carolyn Friedlander's Architextures line, which I first saw at Quilt Market last fall. I snagged a little mini pack (2.5" squares) of the line while I was there, and finally turned it into a small quilt last month.

The top was entirely paper pieced by hand, some of which I did while traveling to and from Quilt Market in Portland in May.

While at Market, I actually had the opportunity to meet Carolyn, who was incredibly nice and had an amazing booth.

I used chambray squares between each of the octagons, and backed the quilt with a vintage reproduction floral print.

I absolutely adore this quilt---now I just need to figure out where to put it!

What are your favorite fabric lines? In addition to Carolyn's work, I really love Leah Duncan's designs, and can't wait to get some yardage of her new line, which will be released next month.

mini quilts for the alzheimer's art quilt initiative

The Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative (AAQI) is one of my favorite charities to support. The work they do to raise money for Alzheimer's research is amazing, and I have my own growing collection of quilts that I've purchased from their site over the past year and a half. I've been wanting to donate quilts to AAQI for quite some time, and last month I finally did.

I made two mini quilts---each one is about 9" x 11"---from scraps in my stash. For each quilt, I hand-stitched monochromatic hexagons together, and then machine appliqued them to the background. I did dense straight-line quilting on each and machine bound them (my first time!). 

Both quilts are now for sale on the AAQI web site, here and here, and all proceeds from their sale go toward Alzheimer's research. If you have the chance, I definitely recommend taking the time to browse the Quilts for Sale page, as there are a lot of really beautiful quilts on there, made by many talented quilters.

P.S. Happy Father's Day to my dad, to whom both of these quilts are dedicated.

hand-printed hexagon wall quilt

English paper piecing has become my go-to project when I'm traveling, so after finishing my star blossoms quilt, I immediately switched over to a hexagon project I started ages ago, but had never finished. During plane rides this past fall to Salt Lake City for Sewing Summit and Houston for Quilt Market, I stitched away.

The main fabrics I used were hand-printed scraps by Sara Lee Parker, which I bought from her table at Crafty Bastards a few years ago. I paired her prints with an olive linen from my stash. I took an improv approach to the layout of the hexagons---I pulled basted hexagons from a pouch without looking, and stitched together whatever I pulled.

Once I'd stitched together all of the pieces I had, I decided to machine appliqué the entire shape to a rectangular scrap of muslin. I did echo quilting around the edges and then framed it all with a black binding.

I love how this piece turned out---and loved working with Sara's fabrics---and can't wait to hang it on my studio wall.

star blossoms mini quilt

When my husband and I went to London last year, I brought along an English paper-piecing project to work on during the plane ride and down time in the city (you can see the start of it here).

In the months that followed, I continued to work on it, and this past fall, I finally finished it.

I used Rachel's Star Blossoms tutorial as my starting point, and decided to make each star monochromatic, pulling scraps exclusively from my stash. For the diamonds in between each star, I used scraps of a gray tablecloth from our wedding (I've used it in other projects as well, including this one and this one).

I backed my mini quilt with two vintage floral prints, and hand quilted it with embroidery floss.

I bound it with an Anna Maria Horner print, which was leftover from this quilt.

I love, love, love this quilt. It was so much fun to work on, especially since it utilized so many little scraps and was perfect for traveling. As soon as it was finished though, I found myself missing having a go-to hand-sewing project---which I quickly remedied with a new English paper-piecing project. Pictures to come soon!