Inspiration.....

Yesterday bundle of Kona Solids arrived from The Village Haberdashery.

It is a serious mix of greens, cerise and white. When I say serious mix of greens I mean 7 shades of green!

Some of them are here:

Kona Solids Sage

Kona Solids Jade Green

Kona Solids Emerald

As you can see they are close in colour value. When my bundle arrived all of the greens were labelled so I knew which one was which...

The last time ordered a huge bundle of oranges and yellows from Simply Solids, Justine had labelled them and in my haste to wash the fabric (yes, I am wash before cut quilter) I had ripped the labels off and the got confused later as to which was which!

So I have pile of solids that I have to match to the colour chart every time I want to use/order more colour... not very sensible!

As I was getting the ready to wash my new batch of greens when I had a brain wave - what if I took a square of the colour and put the label on that?

Then I could take all my squares and out them on a notice board to show the colours I have/ have used and be able to organise myself much quicker!

So I took those greens and cut the swatches and attached the label, then I got my precious Kona Solids Colour Chart and started working through all my other solids:

I find matching quite hard because the glue has changed the hue slightly, so I also went through my receipts so I had a starting point for each colour.. yes I have that many!

 

 

After working through a few of them I started putting them on the board:

 

 

 

They aren't in colour order yet, more a of a pulled this out order...

 

 

 

But when I get them all ordered and named I will have swatches big enough to match to the pattern fabrics I use and be able to order more accurately from the web, it will take the guess work out of colour matching...

 

 

 

Sometimes I get a good idea....



 





Quilting for the Boys

My eldest son has reached the age of 10 1/2and seems very old! He has a fish tank quilt from when he was 4/5, which is no longer cool! (I did catch him snuggled under it the other day though!)

So it is clearly time to make him a new quilt - any old excuse to go fabric shopping!

Over the summer we hunted through the online shops I like and looked at all sorts of blogs for fabric inspiration. I love the new Parsons Gray range, like this bundle from Eclectic Maker, but he thought it was too old!

He was right, but I did get this sinking feeling that we were going to get stuck choosing fabric!

Then we saw the gorgeous range from designer Jessica Hogarth, Velocity. I first saw it at the Festival of Quilts on the fabulous Backstitch stall - I love Alice's shop! So I bought some from the range and bought it home for him to check out!

We had found a winner!

He loves the deep blues, oranges and shapes... so we bought a bundle with the entire collection from Alice and then last week I found the missing piece from the range at The Village Haberdashery:

We have decided to use a pattern in Quilting Modern by Jacquie Gering and Katie Pedersen which has off centre blocks and curvy waves:

I discovered this week that 2 Kona Solids, Tangerine and Glacier, co-ordinate beautifully with the designs so more of those have been ordered from Simply Solids to break up the pattern.

 

 

So this is the project over the Christmas break.... I try to make a quilt every Christmas break and this year it is for my gorgeous big boy!

Going HST Crazy

Part of preparing for my 5 week course at Prema Arts, Uley in March has prompted me to think about the skills I can teach in 5 short weeks...

5 weeks is not a long time, and people will come wanting to get all the knowledge they possibly can about quilts. You simply can not get it packed into 5 weeks... but you can give them skills they can build on...

This is where the HST - Half Square Triangles - come in. They are great because you cut squares (learn rotary cutting skills), you sew along straight line (helps learn accuracy) and it gives you a shape that is soooooo versatile!

Here are a few of the designs I have put together just playing with HST I have made:

 

 

 



These are just a few of the ways you can pay them out. As you can see they are a good choice to give the learners skills and design decisions!

As my middle son just pointed out, "there are millions of ways you could lay them out mummy!" So show me your HST patchwork please!