Madrona Road Challenge

I finished my Madrona Road challenge quilt for the Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild two days before the deadline of March 18th. When I first arrived home from the guild meeting with my bundle of fabric, I pain-stakingly worked on deciphering the story in the text fabric hoping to gain some inspiration.

I knew right away that I would design the quilt around the gypsy girl in the story. I headed on over to the fabric designer Violet Craft's blog to check out the entire fabric line and there in a post was the entire story written clearly right in front of me... ! I immediately fell in love with the Farmstead print which was missing from my bundle. I added a bunch of fabric to my pile plus a yard of the white text fabric and six other fabrics in the Citrus colourway... drool!

From the start, I knew that my quilt would need large rickrack and bright yellow pom-pom trim to give it a gypsy flair! It was the first time using rickrack in the border and I was so excited to see it put together that I sewed it to the quit top without thinking... big mistake! Free-motion quilting + rickrack = trouble! Next time I will remember to sew the rickrack on after quilting! I definitely put my new Janome Horizon to the test and was thankful for the easily height adjustable free-motion foot!

I left the outer border un-quilted to allow turning the edges of the quilt under when sandwiching the pom-pom trim. For the front edge, I folded a strip of black fabric in half lengthwise and pressed. Then I basted the pom-pom trim the folded edge of the strip. I attached the strip just like regular binding but to the quit top only, folding the batting & backing out of the way. Then I folded the batting and backing to the inside of the quilt matching the edge of the quilt top & trimming excess at the corners.

Here is the front of the quilt. It is 42 inches square and filled with details. It is basically a giant log cabin layout with the story of the gypsy girl's life beginning at the bottom right and spiralling toward the centre. The gypsy girl is riding Buster the donkey following the winds through the forest, the sea and the desert. I originally had 21 paper-pieced trees in the design but that was insane so I toned it down to 19 ;o) I am especially proud of my free-motion pebble path through the forest!

Then the girl falls in love with the robot maker which is shown by a row of paper-pieced robots whose magnetic hands stick together to form hearts. She climbs a huge ladder to battle an evil giant and settles with her family in a beautiful castle under the watchful eye of the Griffin in the City of Bridges. I had fun piecing and embroidering the bridges... maybe it's just me or does anyone else see Darth Vader's helmet in them?!

They move on in search of a farmstead to call home and settle on Madrona Road. I changed the original design for the centre block slightly by using the Farmstead fabric for the background and I added a row of appliqued tulips with a fussy cut "Madrona Road" street sign. I finished quilting the outer borders with a few ducklings all in a row amidst tulips.

Here is the back of the quilt. I fussy cut the complete story from the white text fabric, and used the information and a row of those sweet little flowers from the selvedge as the title! I machine embroidered a label and attached it to the bottom of the story and finished it off with a black border and a very carefully planned random-looking border that took me hours to design incorporating every last scrap of Madrona Road fabric in the Ocean colourway.

I really like how my quilt turned out. I had fun free-motion quilting so many different designs and I enjoyed working with the Madrona Road fabric. And just look at that yummy pom-pom trim!

Enjoy your afternoon tea & quilted crafts :o)

Pattern Shop News!

The Teapot Pillow pattern is now available in my SHOP. It is a 12-page PDF containing 2 pages that make up the cover, 4 pages of instructions, 5 template pages, and 1 page on how to properly print and assemble your very own pattern booklet.

All PatchworkPottery digital pattern booklets include metric conversion chart, stitches & terms section, illustrated step-by-step instructions, and full size templates.

Add a warm cozy spot of tea to your favourite armchair with this elegant teapot pillow. Choose floral fabrics for that English look, blue & white toile for fine china, or even try a modern print for a totally different look... I think I'll try some vintage and text fabrics next!

Enjoy your afternoon tea & quilted crafts :o)

Holiday Sewing

I sewed and quilted a few things for Christmas including this MugRug or mini quilt for the Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild Christmas scrap swap. The challenge was to use a bag of scraps from a fellow guild member and create something they love.

Upon finding the name of my partner inside the scraps, I headed to the world wide web in search of anything that could help me design something she would love. I based my design on a photo she had pinned of some scrapbook trees and then added a few of my own fabrics that would work well with the ones I received.

I really liked how it turned out :o) Surprisingly my hubby liked it too and was sad to see it go! It was the first free-motion quilting done on my new Janome Horizon... Merry Christmas to me! I lucked out and found a gently used machine in box for a really good deal so it was a spur of the moment decision and I couldn't be happier. It's twice the size of my old machine and quilts like a dream.

Although the item for the swap was supposed to be smallish, there were many larger items including this fabulous quilt top that I received from Paul. Thank you so much! I love it more than you could know!! You can see more fun items in our group photo.

Next I made a set of Leaf Potholders for my brother's fiancee. Her kitchen is black & white with a hint of red. I don't have much black & white fabric but luckily upgraded my text stash recently with lots of black & white! She was very happy with them and said they were perfect :o)

I also made my daughter three skirts. She loves heavily patterned clothes and definitely has her own style. Finding the perfect fabrics was just as much fun as sewing them!

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and holiday season. Happy Sewing in the New Year!

Enjoy your afternoon tea & quilted crafts :o)

Foreign Treats

I forgot to blog about two wonderfully exciting things that happened a few months ago. Marianne contacted me in August to ask if I would be interested in being interviewed for her three-page article in the October-November issue of the French magazine Quilt Country.

Of course I said yes! It was fun working with Marianne. She had so many interesting questions that I had never really thought about before! I think the article turned out fabulous. I'm planning on giving a copy to my Mom for Christmas. Thank you Marianne! I don't have any extra copies for sale but you can purchase your own copy.

I have added a copy of Quilt Country to my other foreign magazines that include articles about me. Britain, Russia & France... I find that quite exciting :o)

Another excitement happened in London... Liberty of London at Cafe Liberty to be exact! An online blog friend Kerry of VeryKerryBerry asked if she could use my Quilted Teacup pattern to make a sample to go with a Tea Cozy she had made for Liberty Fabrics. I couldn't decline such a sweet offer. She even printed and sewed one of my labels onto the bottom and included my pattern info. Thanks again Kerry! (following: top photo courtesy of Liberty Cafe, bottom photo courtesy of Kerry)

I will leave you now with this lovely treat... a photo of an orange chiffon cake I made for a friend's birthday... if only you could smell & taste it!

Enjoy your afternoon tea & quilted crafts :o)

Colourful Autumn

Here are a few photos of my colourful Autumn. Some from Halloween...

Some of a quilt I'm making for myself based loosely on the Colorbrick quilt tutorial by Rachel of Stitched in Color. Working in these brighter colours was exciting & fun and the quilt is already making me happy :o) My plan is to quilt a double line around each brick and hand-embroider a running stitch between the lines in various colours but that seems like a LOT of work because there are 108 bricks!

A new chair from Ikea. Oh how I love gingham! I may eventually paint the base white.

And a rainbow CoffeeMug pouch I made for Krista when my friend Sonja & I went to see her quilt show at Island Quilter on Vashon near Seattle. The show was awesome and Krista's quilting never ceases to amaze and inspire me. Island Quilter was floor-to-ceiling walls of bright rainbow fabrics! I bought some organically patterned fabrics and began designing a butterfly quilt as Sonja & I drank chai & sketched at a local cafe. It was such a fun road trip and I can't wait to do it again! (some photos courtesy of Sonja)

Some coaters for the Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild table at Got Craft? and some rainbow cupcakes I made for my daughter's birthday.

Enjoy your afternoon tea & quilted crafts :o)

Corner Pocket Tutorial

Using corner pockets is my favourite method of hanging a mini quilt or wall-hanging besides having loops and a rod as part of the finished design. It is super easy, very functional and uses minimal hanging hardware on the wall. It has come to my attention lately that not everyone knows this little hanging trick so today I am happy to share it with all of you.

Materials needed:
fabric scraps
rotary cutter, ruler & mat
iron & ironing board
sewing machine
an unbound mini quilt or wall-hanging
binding
dowel cut to the correct length
push pin or small nails

Step 1: Cut two squares of fabric using your rotary cutter & ruler. I used 3-1/2" squares for this 9 x 12" wall-hanging and would suggest 4" or 5" squares on quilts up to 20" wide. Wider quilts will sag in the centre and need the extra support provided by a good old-fashioned hanging sleeve. Now most tutorials end once the sleeve is sewn on but this tutorial will explain how to actually hang the quilt on the wall.

Step 2: Press in half diagonally. It's important to only press and not slide the iron back & forth which will warp your squares because of the bias fold.

Step 3: Topstitch 1/8" from the folded edge. My machine loves to eat pointy bias corners. To prevent mangled points, start sewing on a small scrap that is butted up to the edge of your corner.

Step 4: Sew the pockets to the quilt. Make certain that you are sewing them to the back of the quilt at the top corners. However, if you feel like being more symmetrical you could add them to all four corners. There are others reasons you may want to add pockets to the bottom corners so please keep reading.

Step 5: Bind your quilt either by machine or by hand. I like to use single fold bias binding machine sewn to the front and attached by hand to the back using a blind stitch.

Step 6: Insert your dowel. As you can see here, a pencil was exactly the right size for my quilt but a chopstick or dowel cut to size will work too.

I wanted to incorporate the pockets into the quilt design so I added them to the bottom corners as well! This would also give you the option of hanging the quilt in any orientation. Adding another dowel or heavier rod at the bottom, will help to straighten a warped quilt.

I usually just use a push pin to hang the quilt. If it is larger two push pins or small nails will work well and stop the quilt from being knocked off-kilter. For now I think I will use this little quilt as a mug rug because it looks fabulous with my red mug. Pretty soon I will have a rug for each & every mug I own!

Enjoy your afternoon tea & quilted crafts :o)