*Congratulations to our two lovely winners: subscriber Emilie and Instagram follower Elise* To celebrate the Spellbound Sampler Book now being available on Amazon {and that includes all it's web-wide 'branches'} I'm giving away two copies and I'll be happy to post them anywhere in the world. If you're a subscriber then the good news is that you don't have to do anything to enter: your name's already in the hat. Because the day is full enough. If you'd like another chance to w

It's the final week of our summer sew-along and for those of you looking for the border and finishing instructions, you can find them here. In addition I have some wonderful eye-candy for you this week. Grab a cup of tea - heck, bring the pot - and prepare to be spellbound by the work of our sew-along participants: In weeks 1-3 we made a Gothic Gatehouse, a Pumpkin and a Moon & Star block. A few of us were sewing with Pepper & Flax, but I was most excited to see what other fa

Cobweb The Garden Spider builds her delicate web - often over twelve inches in diameter - every single day and although we may be squeamish about it’s builder, no one can deny the beauty of her work. You can find the block here. EDIT: Although the sew-along has finished, you can still use the weekly posts as a guide and sew with a group of friends. You can find the Spellbound Sampler pattern book here and on Amazon, or the PDF Pattern Bundle here. CUTTING... Follow steps 1-3

Wise Owl Is there anything quite as eerily atmospheric as the call of an owl? But the t’wit t’woo of the Tawny is, in fact, a duet between a pair and is often heard as winter approaches and they protect their fiefdom. You can find the block here. The Owl is our penultimate block and will make use of all the techniques we've learned over the past seven weeks. Including the snowball technique that we used on our first block, the Gothic Gatehouse, which we'll be adapting to crea

The Raven The subject of Edgar Allen Poe’s Gothic poem and revered, often feared, in folklore, the Raven is one of our most intelligent, long-lived and loyal birds, mating for life. Young Ravens leave their parents in Autumn to find new territory and a mate of their own. Our abandoned garden will be perfect. This week we will be using a new technique: bias strip applique, which is a simple and effective way of adding fine detail to our blocks. In this case, the Raven's legs a

Moonlit Bat No Gothic garden would be complete without a resident Bat, circling through the darkening trees at dusk before retreating to the Gatehouse attic to wait out the winter. You can find the block here. We will be using techniques that we've explored in previous blocks - snowballed corners, dresden fans and simple embroidery - but this block does differ in one respect: it's constructed asymmetrically to accommodate the wings, so some of the units will look slightly lop

Merveille du Jour When I started drafting a bat block for the Spellbound Sampler - we’ll be meeting him next week - I realised what wonderful wings I could make with traditional dresden fans. And then, of course, I tried to think what else I could use them for: birds’ wings and cobwebs, yes, but surely not butterflies or moths? Although most British butterflies and moths are hibernating or migrating by the end of October, there is whole family of moths who emerge in the dyin

Toadstools Beloved of childrens’ book authors, the Toadstool has long been imagined as the home of various pixies, fairies and elves. The origin of the name itself is shrouded in mystery and the Oxford Dictionary describes it as "late Middle English: a fanciful name". Beatrix Potter depicted them quite literally, as stools for toads, in her beautifully detailed illustration for The Toads Tea Party. If acorn-cups were tea-cups, what should we have to drink?  Why! honey-dew fo

Moon & Star Our enchanted garden is lit by a waning crescent moon. Far away from the constant glow of streetlights, moonlight makes the familiar unfamiliar and the sky is suddenly full of twinkling stars. You can find the block Moon & Star block here. EDIT: Although the sew-along has finished, you can still use the weekly posts as a guide and sew with a group of friends. You can find the Spellbound Sampler pattern book here and on Amazon, or the PDF Pattern Bundle here. CUTTI

Pumpkin A familiar symbol of autumn abundance, the Pumpkin is an essential part of Thanksgiving feasts in Canada and the United States. The seeds were taken back to Europe by explorers and by the end of the C17th it had found it's way into our fairy-tales, as Cinderella's magical carriage. The pumpkin block from my first sampler EDIT: Although the sew-along has finished, you can still use the weekly posts as a guide and sew with a group of friends. You can find the Spellbound

Gothic Gatehouse When designing the blocks for the Spellbound sampler I pictured an abandoned garden at dusk in late Autumn. As nature reclaimed the vegetable patch and insects feasted on the last of the wild flowers, birds would be roosting in the trees and bats in the forgotten corners of tumbledown buildings. This block, the Gothic Gatehouse, is the entrance to our enchanted garden. EDIT: Although the sew-along has finished, you can still use the weekly posts as a guide an

EDIT: Although the sew-along has finished, you can still use the weekly posts as a guide and sew with a group of friends. You can find the Spellbound Sampler pattern book here and on Amazon, or the PDF Pattern Bundle here. It's just over a week until we start making our Spellbound Sampler, so I've started to sort through my Layer Cake to assign prints and colours to each block, using the notes I first shared here as my guide:- I first divided my... Layer Cake into brights, li

Are you ready for a summer sew-along? My lovely friend Andrea - from the Willow Cottage Quilt Company - and I will be making a Spellbound Sampler quilt this summer. We'll be sharing our progress on Instagram and we'd love you to join us. If you’re already on Instagram you can find Andrea here and me here. And if you’re not, have you thought about joining? I’ve been posting on Instagram for seven years now (crikey) and actually joined to take part in a sew-along: you can read

Edit: All of the posts & tutorials from 2018's Spellbound Sew-along can be found here. I've finished my Spellbound Sampler Quilt at long last. I've really enjoyed hand quilting it over the past few months, although it was frequently put aside while I tackled Christmas gifts and magazine commissions. After stitching around the motifs I chose a zig-zag for the individual block backgrounds, echoing the border. When it came to binding I chose a delicious coral stripe from the fab

Welcome to my first Petit Four tutorial: finishing instructions for your Spellbound Sampler blocks. My directions are aimed at those of you making all nine blocks, but there are also notes, at the bottom of the post, for adapting the setting to make a table runner with just three blocks. And next week I'll be posting a tutorial for a cushion which uses just one. When I designed the quilt I knew that some blocks would need light backgrounds and some would need a dark contrast,