Sunday Stash #7 - Festival of Quilts 2015 purchases

A trip to the Festival of Quilts always means I return home with Liberty fabric.  This year I was more restrained as I already have a large stash of Tana Lawn, but I made some great purchases nonetheless.  

I knew beforehand that I would buy some fabrics from the range inspired by Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland.  I bought two fat quarters of Suzy Elizabeth, which has tea paraphernalia (tea pots, crockery, cutlery).  This is a good fabric choice for me.  I also got three scrap pieces of Gallymoggers Reynard.  I love these fabrics, but I knew I didn't need a lot of them.  I will fussy cut them and add them to the right project at some point.

I bought more scrap pieces of fabrics I have already but which are now in new colourways.  Here we have Strawberry Thief, Mauvey, Wiltshire and Ros.  These are already firm favourites in my stash and it's nice to add new variations.

I also purchased some scraps which are entirely new to me.  There are a couple I know like Tatum and Isle of Wight, but there are three others I don't know at all and I haven't discovered their names yet.

I also purchased this large piece of fabric, but I've never seen it before and haven't managed to confirm its name.  (If you know, please let me know in the Comments.)  It's a child-like print with lots of critters and flowers.  I love it because it's cute and it also has ladybirds.  I might use it to back my Scrappy Snowballs and Squares quilt.

I know that there is still a lot of Liberty fabric here, but I still believe I was self-disciplined and only bought what I *needed*.

Happy Sunday!

Poppy's Rainbow Quilt: A finished quilt

This quilt feels like an achievement.  I imagined it on Sunday evening and by Tuesday evening it was finished, and everything (fabrics, wadding, backing, binding) came from my stash.  I didn't have to purchase anything extra.  Somehow (rather insanely) this makes me think that this quilt was free to make.  Who am I kidding?

Anyway, this quilt is following in the footsteps of my other rainbow quilt and other quilts made predominantly with 2½" squares.  But I added some 4" strips to make this quilt a bit different and also to reduce the amount of cutting and piecing I would have to do.

Pink has made an appearance in my rainbow again.  I think most girls will appreciate this addition.  I opted for a low volume backing with light grey flowers and mint green leaves.  I found a grey binding which I think makes the colours on the front really stand out.  The observant will have noticed that some of my new fabrics from the Festival of Quilts have made it into this quilt.  This one quilt now justifies all those purchases!

As this quilt is for a little girl called Poppy I included a couple of Liberty prints with Poppies on them.  You can see a couple of them in the photo below:

I opted for some straight line quilting again.  I quilted tramlines along all the width seams.  I changed the colour to match the rainbow them.  I can boast lots of Aurifil threads to make this possible.

Quilt Stats:

Finished dimensions: 41" x 52"
Number of 2½" squares: 140
Number of 4" strips: 7
Approximately 100 different fabrics included (Many thanks to my friend, Amy, who donated 50 or so squares from her stash.)

Thank you for visiting!

Sunday Stash #6 - Festival of Quilts 2015 purchases

I've been to the Festival of Quilts at the NEC again this year.  It was as great as ever - amazing quilts, beautiful fabrics, lots of inspiration.  This year I stayed overnight in a hotel and spent two days at the festival.  I will definitely do that again.  It meant I could peruse the festival and reflect on what I was seeing.  Last year I was just wired and hyper because I was so aware of time and wanted to do as much as possible, but I ended up feeling short-changed, as if I hadn't really "experienced" the festival.

I bought lots of fabric.  The "Sew my Stash" project really went out of the window.  Oh well!  Here we go with some (admittedly, not all) of my purchases:

This year I decided to buy lots of "stash builders".  These Honeycomb Dot Reversed by Riley Blake were a must-have!

These are other stash builder fabrics I purchased.  Some are older prints, but many are new like the Mini Pearl Bracelets.  I love ladybirds, so I had to get two of Tula Pink's new fabrics.  I expect I'll be using many of these fabrics in no time at all.

I made my first Cotton + Steel purchases.  Their fabrics are amazing, so I had to be good and limit my purchases to my very favourites.  I love the Melody Miller picnic range, but was restrained and purchased only four prints.  I also bought four fabrics from the black and white range.  So cute!

Following my Snowball and Squares quilt I am now drawn to low volume fabrics because I think they are more interesting than plain white.  I added lots of low volume to my stash and many of them have text.  I think these are going to be interesting additions to my future quilts.

My love for text fabrics is surely a result of my infatuation with Kokka's Lighthearted.  I just had to get more of these fabrics and in some of the different colourways.  I only saw one stall selling this so I got half metres to be on the safe side.

 

I was still drawn to cute, bold and novelty fabrics.  Here is a selection of some of my newbies.  Cats figure strongly again, though I also picked out some sea-themed fabrics and I have some notion of making a nautical quilt in the future.

I could not resist some of the scrap bags on sale.  I got some great grey, black and low volume fabrics from these and I know they will be used shortly.

This won't be the last time I mention this year's Festival of Quilts.  There is much more to report and reflect on.  I have some Liberty prints to show you soon, but for now we'll leave it at that.

Enjoy your summer sewing!