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Nicola

Spellbound Sew-along: preparing your fabric

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, lights & darks. From my brights pile I chose three shades... for my Pumpkin and Toadstools and a warm yellow for my Gothic Gatehouse windows before selecting five prints for the dresden fans. From my lights I set aside one light grey print for the Gatehouse walls and two greys for the Wise Owl before choosing seven prints for the Dresden fans. Finally from the darks, individual off-black prints were chosen for the Raven, the Bat and the Gatehouse roof. That still left twenty Layers to cut the smaller pieces from, so I had plenty of fabric...

This time round I'm using a Layer Cake of 'Pepper & Flax' by Corey Yoder for Moda, which has the same soft grey, charcoal and verdigris Corey used in the 'Sundrops' fabric I used for my original quilt, but this time exchanges the coral for mossy green. My first instinct was to add in some coral Fat Quarters, but then I thought it would be fun to revisit some of the blocks in this new colour palette. So, inspired by a vintage poster, my Toadstool block will use the yellows in my Layer Cake...

And, inspired by the appropriately named Baby Boo pumpkins that haunt (sorry) my Instagram feed each Autumn, I'll have a fashionable white pumpkin. These have been grown by my friend Lou, who has the prettiest allotment you've ever seen...

My white pumpkin will look better on a dark background, so I have done a little juggling with my blocks, switching the Pumpkin with the Mervielle du Jour block - this quilt will have a slightly more colourful moth - which has, in turn, swapped places with the Gothic Gatehouse...

So to sum up, this is how I've divided up my 'Pepper & Flax' Layer Cake...

Clockwise from top left: my Layer Cake divided into lights, brights & darks; three golden prints for the Toadstool block; the prints chosen for my bright dresdens, I've added an extra print to take account of the Mervielle du Jour; and the gorgeous print chosen for the Gothic Gatehouse windows, with its perfect tracery design.

Clockwise from top left: the greys chosen for my Gatehouse and Owl; the prints chosen for my light dresdens; all my fabrics together; and the dark prints chosen for my Raven and Gatehouse roof.

Pepper and Flax hasn't actually hit the shops here in the UK, so I'm using Bella Solids for my block backgrounds. Corey has always been very generous in sharing her favourite solid background colours, so I have picked Light Lime (100) for my light blocks and Etchings Slate (170) for the dark. For my white contrast I've chosen an older print from Zen Chic's excellent 'Modern Backgrounds' (and I'm very happy to see that it's being reprised by Moda).

I'll be sharing my first block, the Gothic Gatehouse, with you all on the 1st of June and I'll be posting on Instagram as well as here on the blog (so we can all benefit from bigger photos...). We're starting with the Gatehouse so that we can tackle 'that roof' first, because I know a few of you are feeling a little nervous about it. Once I've shared my favourite tricks you'll be ready to breeze through it. So start assembling your favourite treats, we're nearly ready to start sewing...

Nicola xx

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