Well I thought I better start as I mean to go! Two posts in two days isn't too shabby is it?
About a year ago in the midst of all our renovations work my daughter picked out some really pretty fabric for me to make a quilt out of for her: Sakura Park from Moda. Fast forward a few months and we decided upon a pattern to go with: Charmalade at Moda Bake Shop by Pamela Lincoln. Then fast forward to November last year and I tried to get the fabric. Note to self, when you see fabric you like: buy it! Oh boy was it hard to track down the fabric I needed. It came in from America, Australia and the UK in the end!
It was a bit of a tall order to make my first quilt that is bigger than a baby quilt in 3 weeks in time for Christmas but I did it! And totally love it! The quilting could be better as always and one of the rows of piecing just doesn't match up but oh well, I still love it!
The Charmalade pattern calls for Moda Snow charm squares, but as I wasn't using the Marmalade fabric line I wasn't sure how Snow would match in with the Sakura Park, so instead I decided to wait til it arrived and trot down to my local quilting shop to find a match. It just meant cutting 65 charms! Drum roll please....enter the Sizzix Bigz 5 inch square die! This was great for ensuring accuracy and saving my hand using the rotary cutter! Not much wastage either which was a bonus.
Although my hand didn't escape the rotary cutter completely as there sure is a lot of trimming to do in this project, 130 squares!
I decided I would not be able to the beautiful fancy quilting that was on the one in the tutorial. So instead I opted for mostly straight (ish) line quilting with some meandering loops around the edge. I love the tutorial, very easy to follow and the pattern looks really striking.
The quilting wasn't totally without mishaps! This happened on a couple of occasions and there was much muttering of expletives going on in our house!!
I couldn't get as much fabric as I needed for the back to be all one colour so instead I opted to put a strip of different fabric down the middle.
Really love how on the back the quilting really stands out.
I put a label on the back with a photo of our little family.
By the way, the fabric line also contained a blue range of the fabrics but I took those out and used them on another project to be blogged later!
Thanks to Pamela for producing a really great tutorial!
Sharing this at Classy Clutter! And at Sew Can She. Sharing at Quilt Story too!
Absolutely beautiful quilt! I hadn't seen that pattern before, so I'm off to Pin it! Love the fabric ~ and I know how hard it is sometimes to find older collections. Thank goodness for our online community!
ReplyDeleteLove HSTs. Nice combo too.
ReplyDeleteIt turned out awesome Jo!! You did a great job. Jade will treasure this forever, I'm sure. Wondering where the blues were used for 😉.
ReplyDeleteA beautiful quilt! My grandmother quilted, I remember her hand sewing all the pieces together...quilts are hard work,and an act of love, yours is beautiful! Found you through Spotlight Saturday linky party.
ReplyDeleteIt's beautiful! Love the fabrics!
ReplyDeleteLovely quilt. I too have learned, buy when you see. That is why I have such a gigantic stash. :-)
ReplyDeleteArgh, my comment disappeared. Here goes again. Lovely quilt. I too have learned about how hard to buy fabric later. So I buy it when I see it and like it. Two problems with that. I don't always like it till I get home. And it grows my stash. (My apologies if you end up with this comment twice.)
ReplyDeletePink and green and white look so pretty together. This quilt is lovely.
ReplyDeleteYAY! This is beautiful and you should be very proud of it!! I'm also glad you liked the tutorial. I had fun making it as well.
ReplyDelete