Thursday, November 8, 2012

Purple flowers - and bears!

I have been teaching a beginner patchwork class over the past month. What an interesting class! Such amazing, diverse people, who have made different and gorgeous quilts for friends and family.
The project was a baby sized quilt, 30 x 40 inches, made from 6x8 blocks of a design called Puss in the Corner. It's a good one to learn on, as it is simple enough to tackle but complex enough to challenge. I like my students to learn as much as possible from their classes, so always go for something not absolutely basic as a starting point.
As it was a patchwork class, the quilts went off to Sue B for long arm quilting between class 3 and 4. In class 4, we bound them, but it is quite time consuming and so they all went home with their mitred corners pinned, to slip stitch the binding. And yesterday, Steve's quilt came to visit me, all finished, before it gets taken to the US as a gift to a friend today. So, I got out the camera to immortalise it!

As Steve doesn't have any babies to make quilts for, we decided to increase the size of the pieces by an inch, and make a lap size quilt, so it is 42x54. I thought he would choose all batiks but nooo, he fell hard for the purple flowers and came up with this surprising combination!
It's interesting how a photo affects a quilt - the lilac floral "reads as a plain" in the photo, so the white background forget me not fabric seems to form the background of a strange figure 8 formation made by the other three fabrics. If you can refocus on it, you can see the pairs of squares meeting (kissing) corner to corner, each hugged by a floral, and arranged back to back. Perhaps we should rename the pattern Hugs and Kisses!
When it came to choosing a quilting pattern, Steve went with Bears in Woods. I rather boringly suggested petunias, but the bears and fir trees won.

Maybe you can make out the cool quilting pattern?
I love this quilt for its mad, quirky combination of fabrics and patterns that really works in the end. It just goes to show there are no hard and fast rules as far as quilts are concerned!
Bon Voyage Steve and Tommy,  we miss you already!

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