Hello, and welcome to this pretty post full of Liberty eye candy! If you like rainbows and minis, and quilts, this one is all for you!This week I've been making a few sewing projects to go on display and up for sale at Ava&Neve's display at the Brisbane Quilt and Craft Fair, which runs from Oct 3-7.
I knew that I wanted to contribute a mini quilt among other things, and so I started pulling a rainbow of fabrics, and ended up with 56 different Liberties to be exact! It's a lot of fun auditioning the different shades and values, and I love how versatile Liberty is how it mixes and matches. There's such a range of styles from contemporary to tiny florals, bold and bright and muted, but it just works.
I chose the Belle mini quilt, by Threadbare Creations, and a beautiful pattern it is! Go check out Rose's blog and Etsy shop, as she is a totally talented Aussie designer for sure! Her patterns are clear and easy to follow, with plenty of guidance for choosing fabrics, and a colouring page for your own.My vision was slightly different from Rose's original design, but as you can see, I got to use 7 different shades on each section, to make a really bold overall effect.I decided to back this with white, and taper the edges to continue the slightly unusual shape on the edges. Square quilts are so last year!
My favourite part is always the quilting. Always. And I was hoping to hand quilt a fair bit of this one, but there just wasn't time, and I'm completely new at hand quilting, and knew that doing it under pressure would yield less than good results.So it was back to straight lines, and that suits me just fine too. I love the monotonous job of just sewing! You can see my colouring page of 'Belle' in the background, as I've had it printed out and ready to go for quite a while!
I quilted half inch spaced lines, and then came back across for a second pass, to give a totally modern look to it all. Not many of those squares are actually square, but from a distance it works!
And I found the perfect vibrant Liberty binding for a rainbow quilt...isn't it gorgeous?! I decided to handbind in the end, as it was only small, and the non right angles that I'd made were scaring me slightly! But it was all good...it turned out perfectly!!
Just in time to brighten up my studio for spring, and right at home with my growing collection of perle 8 threads!I love how the angles on the border plays tricks with your eyes...I didn't realise quite what would happen if I made it not square...what do you think?
And there's a jungle under there!I found just the right busy backing in bright shades for the back...don't you love it when that happens??And it felt sooo good to crank out a quilt in a couple of days, even if it was a mini. I haven't actually made a quilt for far too long now :(.If you can make it to the Brisbane Quilt & Craft Fair, be sure to say hi to Martina and the lovely ladies at Ava&Neve! And maybe you'll see some of my work too!
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