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.

hope valley mini flying geese quilt

While packing up my studio and preparing for our recent move, I came across the leftover squares of Hope Valley fabric that I had cut for this baby quilt a few years ago. Rather than tossing them into the scrap bin, I decided to take advantage of the fact that they were already precut and create a small quilt from them. I cut an equal number of squares of a natural Essex linen-cotton fabric, which complemented Denyse Schmidt's pretty prints, and paired the fabrics to create small 2" half-square triangles.

For the layout,  I settled on three columns of flying geese, pointing both north and south. I love the bit of unexpected movement that the layout creates.

I used a puffier-than-normal batting that gives the mini quilt a nice loft, which was especially apparent after I stitched in the ditch; the geese really appear to pop! I used a whimsical, long-hoarded Japanese cat print for the back, which happened to coordinate with the quilt's color palette.

I did a scrappy, hand-stitched binding to finish everything off. It was fun to make use of leftover fabric and work once more with a fabric collection I've long loved; it's something I hope to do more often! This mini quilt is now available in the shop.

do. Good Stitches: March Blocks

Last month, Sonya requested wonky star blocks for the March quilt for our circle of do. Good Stitches.

Working within her suggested color theme---which I loved!---I made two blocks using quilting weight, linen and voile.

You can see all of the past blocks I've made here. 

handprinted: a fabric swap III

For the second year in a row, I participated in the hand-printed fabric swap organized by Leslie from Maze and Vale (one of my favorite fabric designers!). You can see the triangle fabric I printed last year here.

For this year's fabric, I decided to use a stamp that I carved in a surface-printing workshop I took at Lotta Jansdotter's studio back in February. The bowl design is based on an image I found in a book in Lotta's studio, and reminds me of Cathrineholm enamelware. 

Using navy blue fabric ink, I printed the bowl on a few different fabrics: two types of linen and a quilting cotton. It was interesting to see how the fabric weave changed how the design printed. I mailed the four fat quarters to my swap partners in England and Australia, and have already received some great fabric from them in return.

I really love printing my own fabric, and am looking forward to trying out screen printing in an upcoming workshop at the Cloth Fiber Workshop in Asheville. My goal is to have enough hand-printed fabric by the end of the year to make a quilt!

do. Good Stitches swap: what i sent

Last week, I mailed a small package to Erica (an amazing quilter who blogs over at Kitchen Table Quilting), as part of a swap amongst the members of the Wish Circle of do. Good Stitches.

In it, I included a set of coasters I'd made for her using Essex linen and prints by Anna Maria Horner, one of her favorite fabric designers. The pattern for the coasters came from Rashida Coleman-Hale's I Love Patchwork. The coasters were fun to make---and a great way to use up scraps!---and I'd love to make more for both holiday gifts and upcoming craft fairs. I backed each coaster with a coordinating scrap from my stash, and quilted everything with zig-zags.

I also included a little bundle of scraps for Erica, in the colors she'd asked for: navy, green and gray.

This was such a fun swap to participate in, and it was nice to be able to get to know my fellow circle members a bit more. Hopefully we'll do more swaps in the future!

LMP+QG february challenge: stacked coins quilt

Each month, my friend Kait and I are making projects from the book, Last-Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts ("LMP+QG" for short). You can see previous projects here. 

This month, Kait and I tackled the stacked coins quilt in LMP+QG. I've been trying to have these monthly challenges be an opportunity for me to both work from my stash, as well as try out new materials and techniques. In that spirit, I pulled out a fat quarter pack of Julia Rothman's Miscellany line for Cloud9 Fabrics, which I had been hoarding for months, and finally cut into it, and paired it with a linen-cotton blend (Robert Kaufman's Essex), a material I've loved the look of and have been wanting to try for ages.

For the back, I paired leftover coins with white from my stash:

I finished both the top and back for the quilt, though I haven't had a chance to put everything together quite yet. I must admit that while I'm happy with how the top turned out, I love the back more. I loved piecing all of the leftover coins into scrappy blocks---it's definitely a technique I'd like to try again.

See Kait's pretty blue version of the pattern here.

Coming up next month: Pieced Pillows

craft social mug rug swap

Earlier this month, I participated in Craft Social's mug rug swap, the first swap I've done in awhile. For my swap partner, Yvette, I made this churn dash mug rug from linen and a floral print from the Dream On collection:

The inspiration for the design came from this Purl Bee project, which my friend Kait had reminded me about the week before.

In return, I received this adorable crocheted mug rug from Beth:

scrap swap: what i sent

Katie and I recently sent each other boxes filled with our fabric scraps, and this is what resulted:

{A pair of quilted place mats made using Katie's scraps, my scraps, and linen from Ikea.}

rainbow of stitches contest

On Sunday, it was announced that my embroidered doily was the winner of the white category in Feeling Stitchy's Rainbow of Stitches Contest--wow! Being new to embroidery, I'm so honored and flattered to be in the company of so many talented stitchers.

My doily is now in the running for the grand prize, and if you have a moment, I recommend checking out all of the finalists and voting for your favorite one. Voting closes at 12:00 a.m. (EST) on Wednesday, June 16, so be sure to get your vote in before then. And thank you, everyone, for all of your lovely comments here and over on Feeling Stitchy and Flickr!

embroidery project: doily

Earlier this year, I had the pleasure of taking the Artistic Embroidery class with Kat McTee at The Stitch Lab in South Austin. After falling in love with this doily-themed embroidery project, I knew I wanted to try out something similar.

I started off using a simple circular design that I found in a book at the sewing studio. I transferred the design to my piece of linen and then started stitching, embellishing the pattern as I went along. I experimented with a variety of stitches, including a modified blanket fan, to create a sampler of sorts.

One of my favorite sections of the doily is its center, which features a cluster of French knots.

I finally framed the piece last week and finished the back off with a vintage sheet.

UPDATE: This piece won the white category in Feeling Stitchy's Rainbow of Stitches Contest!