From my Sketchbook: Shepherd's Delight

Over the past ten years these posts have been my favourites to write. Some quilts have a more complicated back-story than others and this one has probably taken the longest to evolve from sketch to stitch. So settle back and let me take you on a little journey...

Shepherd's Delight hanging in the studio last February...

The seeds of this design were sown a decade ago when I started to sketch out a design based on a chocolate-box pretty row of cottages in the Cotswold village of Bibury. Called Arlington Row, it's probably one of the most photographed streets in that most photogenic of regions. William Morris, founder of the Arts & Crafts movement, spent his summers in nearby Kelmscott and described Bibury as "the most beautiful village in England".

Arlington Row was built in the late fourteenth century as a monastic wool store and then converted into a row of weavers cottages* in the 1600s. Copious amounts of water from the stream that ran through the village were needed to process the woollen cloth and remove its natural oils, before it was stretched out to dry - on tenterhooks - in the meadow opposite.

*The cottages were preserved by the Royal Society of Arts in 1929 and passed into the care of the National Trust. Most are now homes, but the Trust does rent a couple as holiday lets.

my 'quilt block' sketch of Arlington Row...

I made this initial sketch when I was developing my early house quilts - Homely Joys, To Skye! and the Doll's House mini - having sketched out a sort of 'vocabulary' of gables, doors and attic windows. And there it sat for the longest time. Every now and again I'd toy with the idea of making it into a bolster cushion or table runner, but I knew that, with the right companion blocks and setting, it would make a lovely quilt.

In the meantime I'd read Sally Coulthard's charming and thought-provoking book, A Short History of the World According to Sheep. The Cotswolds grew rich quite literally on the back of sheep: the medieval wool trade provided the wealth to build it's pretty villages and glorious churches. The subsequent decline of the British wool trade, along with the cotton boom of the industrial revolution, impoverished the area and preserved it in aspic. Which is why it so enchanted the artists of the Arts & Crafts movement.

from pencil sketch to quilt block...

That potted history was my starting point: a row of cottages and a water meadow. My first thought was to encircle a centre of classic blocks with rows of cottages, perhaps adding a church or a mill. But then I considered that without the sheep there wouldn't have been any cottages in the first place and everything fell into place. I spent a very happy evening finessing the proportions of my sheep - as you do! - and cherry-picking a couple of my favourite cottages to simplify their piecing. And I settled on a row-by-row setting (Arlington ROW, get it?!), separating my sheep and cottages with strips of traditional churn dash blocks.

And where are those churn dash blocks, I hear you ask? Well, when I drew up my sketch as a scaled drawing on the computer it was all looking a bit horizontal, so I turned those churn dashes into little meadow flowers: their leaves added the vertical movement I was looking for. The cottages' pink doors tie all of the colours together (although in real life they're a tasteful shade of green).

I already had a fabric collection in mind as I was putting together my final design: Camille Roskelley's Rosemary Cottage for Moda Fabrics. Her rose strewn prints in shades of slate blue, warm stone and grass green suited my subject perfectly. I love using two contrasting backgrounds in a row quilt, so paired an off-white solid with the subtle texture of a Tilda Chambray in soft sage green. The border and binding fabric - also by Camille from her Sunnyside collection - echoes the two background fabrics and Pascale, from Watson & Thornton, quilted it with loops and leaves to add lots of vintage texture.

Shepherd's Delight will appear in issue 128 of Today's Quilter - out on the 4th of June - and my editor, Fiona, is letting me share it with you before publication because if you subscribe to TQ using the link www.ourmediashop.com/TQP128 you can save a scrumptious 60% off your first six issues at just £14.99 by Direct Debit!* I've been creating projects for TQ for eight years now and I'm still pinching myself to be honest.

I hope having a peek behind the scenes will encourage you to create your own country idyll...

with love from the studio,

*PS: I do just want to mention that this isn't an affiliate offer, that is, I'm not being paid to share this promotion with you, I just love the magazine and think you'll enjoy it too.