At the darkest time of the year, it's lovely to stay warm and cosy inside making a quilt that looks forward to bright spring days ahead. And I have a project in issue 44 of Today's Quilter that does just that.
Homeward Bound combines a colourful cottage block, a simple, graphic garden block and a border of bunting constructed from flying geese. When I designed this quilt last spring I originally had the beautiful border print in Edyta Sitar's Something Blue collection for Makower in mind for the gardens...
But as another contributor was using that collection for a project, I picked out a Layer Cake of Vanessa Goertzen's delicious Sugar Pie for Moda: full of old-fashioned roses, cross-stitch hearts and ditsy florals. I mixed in a few Liberty favourites from my stash, including the classic Betsy print and a fabulously quirky fabric - who's name I sadly don't recall - of elegantly gowned ladies playing croquet with rabbits and deer. As you do...
My lovely friend Jayne at Quilter's Trading Post chose a gorgeously romantic pantograph to quilt it with and I bound it it in a coral stripe (from Amy Sinibaldi's Les Petits for Art Gallery Fabrics). Is there anything as lovely as a stripy binding?
The lovely thing about patterns which use pre-cuts is how easily you can make a scrappy quilt in your favourite colours. Love Lavender? How about starting out with a Layer Cake of Jardin de Versailles by French General for Moda and picking out your favourite dusky lilac print to line the garden paths? I can almost hear the bees buzzing...
And, of course, it might look rather wonderful in Christmas fabric...but lets not talk about that now: it's too soon...much too soon...
Nicola xx