Anna Maria Horner, Hand Quilted, On a Whim Quilt

Welcome!  I'm pleased to have finished another hand quilted project.  This is a made with a pattern from Thimble Blossoms - one I have made before - called On A Whim.  

The rainbow of shades are from the Anna Maria Horner line, True Colors.  I had a large piece of fabric from her older Loulouthi line which I used for the borders.  The white background pieces are simply a white sheet from Ikea.

The backing is my favourite...VOILE!  So soft and cuddly.  The pieces are ones I have collected from Anna Maria Horner and from Tula Pink.  And, as I have mentioned, the quilt is completely hand quilted.  I used a rainbow of threads that I had, DMC perle cottons in size 8 and Aurifil cottons in size 12.  It's the squishiest and snuggliest.

QUILT STATS:

Pattern: On a Whim by Camille Roskelley for Thimble Blossoms

Fabrics: Anna Maria Horner, True Colours fat quarters and Loulouthi Framed in Sea Glass

Thread: machine pieced with Aurifil 50 wt, hand quilted with Aurifil 12 wt and DMC 8 wt.

Backing: various voiles from Anna Maria Horner Little Folks and Tula Pink lines

Batting: Warm & Natural

Dimensions: 68" by 82"

Completed March 2016

Anna Maria Horner Rainbow Baby Quilt

I'm actually making a large project with my pile of True Colors from Anna Maria Horner, but after cutting it all out I had enough scraps to make a little baby quilt.  So I did that first! :)

I love, love, love the backing: Clippings from Anna Maria Horner's line Loulouthi, and doesn't that print from Dowry make great binding?  The white background prints are ones I had in my stash that make those rainbow colours just pop.  I do love a happy quilt.

This one is for sale in my Etsy shop!

A Little Triangle Baby Quilt

I had some trouble with photographing this today...it's minus 30 Celsius outside, so the one photo I got that is actually in focus is angled.  I promise, the quilt is square!  Oh well, I was feeling the need to share so this is what you get!

I made this with a variety of triangles, obviously, and varying shades of aqua, Kona solids as a background. Clever observers may recognize this quilt as being inspired by an Anthropologie quilt that made the rounds in blogland a bit ago.

I really do want to be original some day. But for now, as I said above, this is what you get!  The binding, since we are looking at it, is an Anna Maria Horner print...

The backing is my favourite! Anna Maria Horner VOILE! It is so very, very soft and snuggly. And so pretty too!

I quilted it in straight lines on my machine with pale gray Aurifil in 50 wt.  It finishes at about 35" by 41" and the batting is Warm & Natural.

So there it is! Have to run and put another log in the woodstove!  And wrap up in a quilt.  And make some tea... hope it's warmer where you are, but maybe not.  It *is* rather cozy in here :)

Field Study Scout Quilt

Since the recipients of this quilt are about to receive it this afternoon, and they are getting married right before that, I doubt they are happening upon my blog right now and it is safe to share this!

The groom is a long time friend of hubby's and the bride...we just met her last night! So I had little to no information to go on as far as the particular aesthetic preferences of this special lady! A bit scary when trying to dream up a quilt! The couple did not have a registry so I couldn't lurk that either to look for colour and design clues. So I used the wedding invitation as my sole inspiration:

Naturally, I immediately thought of Anna Maria Horner's line Field Study, and put in an order at Warp & Weft. I bought this Field Study bundle and then rounded it out with some Field Study from Hawthorne Threads as well. See the peacock feathers? Perfect, right??

(I was so excited yesterday when I saw the peacock feathers also in the centrepieces she was creating, and the turquoise in my husband's tuxedo tie!) Anyways, back to the quilt. I chose Allison of Cluck Cluck Sew's Scout pattern. I varied the pattern slightly, alternating the direction of the "feathers". I used Essex Yarn Dyed Linen in Flax for the fabrics between the feathers and Kona Navy for the centres. I also decided to back it with voile and wow, am I glad I did. It is SOOO soft and light!

  

Then I decided to hand quilt it! Actually I was only going to add a couple of lines of hand stitching and machine quilt the rest... but when I tried adding the machine quilting, it just made those areas ever so slightly stiff. The combination of hand quilting and voile on the back made the whole thing so delightfully "squishy" and I didn't want to lose that. So hand quilted it had to be!!

It actually went quite quickly ~ I finished the whole quilt in 10 days! I used big stitches and Aurifil in a heavy 12 wt. so that made a difference. (I have since purchased little stickers to protect my thimble hating fingers. I'm not going to do that again without a little something!) I embroidered a label and will be heading to the wedding this afternoon. I just sent off my handsome hubby in his tuxedo:

 

Squeee! Doesn't he look great? (And doesn't the tie match the quilt perfectly?! Squeee!) And now forgive my overenthusiasm with the photos:

Quilt Stats: 

Pattern: Scout by Allison Harris
Fabric: Field Study by Anna Maria Horner, Essex Yarn Dyed in Flax, Kona Navy
Backing: Cocoon Voile by Valori Wells
Thread: Pieced in Aurifil 50 wt colour 2325, hand quilted in Aurifil 12 wt in various colours Dimensions: 61" by 71"
Batting: Warm and Natural
Completed August 2013

Folksy Blocksy Handsy Quiltsy

I finished stitching up this little lovely today, whilst sitting out on the deck! First day of outside stitching this year! Yahoo! As I said in the previous post, I decided to try a little hand quilting. I'm always so inspired with what Anna Maria Horner does with those pretty perle cottons and a needle, so as this quilt is with her lovely, old world inspired, rich and Bohemian fabrics, this lended itself well to that kind of stitching in my opinion!

I used some no. 8 perle cotton from DMC in colour 725, a golden yellow, and just went at it! It was so much fun! I am not a thimble wearer, so my middle finger is not agreeing with me at this point, but I think she just needs to toughen up!

But backing up (no pun intended)... I had been longing to try backing a quilt in voile! What a pain to stabilize that back and make it stay put so I could baste, it's sooo slippery! I ended up borrowing some heavy duty clamps from my husbands workshop and clamped that slip of a thing to my dining room table. In hindsight, maybe I just should have flipped the quilt and taped down the top, and added the batting and voile on top of that? Oh well, I'll try that next time.

I even had some voile to use for the binding. That was lovely to sew on and those mitre points were so neat and sharp with that delicate material! And such a soft, flexible and trim binding too!

  Anyways, I am very happy with mah little quilt, and wanted to share it with you! Thanks for looking!

 
PS.  I wanted to add that I was inspired to make this quilt by Rachel at Stitched in Color and her Color Brick Quilt Tutorial here!

A Wee Update and Some Business

Hey there friends! Just a quick post to claim my blog for Bloglovin, a site if you are not already using to follow blogs, I suggest you do! Just a sec, Follow my blog with Bloglovin. Ok. That's done! Here are a couple of quilts I've been working on to pretty up this post a bit. More on them later when they are finished!

 

I tried a little hand quilting on that last one! I'm hooked, I dare say, and already looking about for other quilts to hand quilt some more!

A Most Excellent Weekend Part 2

Remember this post? Gayle and her family returned to us this weekend and we managed to take some pictures of us together with our finished quilts!

 

Of course we did some sewing together this weekend too!

 

Gayle started her own hexies (tee-hee! I got her addicted too!) and I worked on mine. Another fantastic weekend with my quilty friend!

A Most Excellent Weekend

My most excellent weekend began when my hubby discovered on Facebook that his friend from his days in the airline industry about 15 years ago now worked at a quilt shop!  He gave her my blog address, she commented on my blog, I followed her in pinterest, we both liked a triangle quilt she pinned from Anna Maria Horner fabrics, so she said, "Why don't I come up for the weekend and we can whip one of those babies up?!"  and I replied, "Yes!  Let's!"

Anyways.  I had no idea what a truly delightful person she was, or how wonderful her family was.  Her hubby and their two children came along and did ATVs, bikes and guns with my hubby and boys while she and I sewed the days away!  Pure bliss, I tell you.

And here is one of the quilts produced, my version of an Anna Maria Horner Triangle quilt, with a few other fabrics, I affectionately and oh so creatively have called, "Triangles with Gayle".  Seriously, if you have a more memorable title, please tell me.  Gayle?

So glad I now have another real life quilty friend! Thanks Gayle for the fantastic time and taking a chance on spending a whole weekend with us :)