Saffron Craig Large Field Quilt.

Here is the full, finished Large Field Quilt I made out of the Saffron Craig birds and trees fabrics and blogged about in the last post.

Close up, you can see the quilting and a bit of the back - love this 2 inch black and white stripe, and it shows up the quilting a treat!

I made up a couple of kits for the quilt - one using exactly the fabrics in the one I made, and the other with the Magical Lands collection.

Both will make up beautiful quilts. (Contact me if you would like to get one for the lovely price of $112!)

I used Leesa Chandler's pattern, Southern Jewels, thinking that the large fields of fabric would work well for Saffron's fabrics too.

Here it is in Leesa's Under the Australian Sun Fabrics that it was originally designed for. this quilt was made by Juliet and was one of the quilts hung in the Maleny Quota Quilt Show a couple of weekends ago.

I had a retail stand at the quilt show and it was really nice saying hello to everyone and looking at the quilts. There were some beauties there.

I want to share a few pics of finished quilts from some of the classes I've blogged about. It's so nice to see the end product of a workshop!The first ones were made in the Stained Glass Stack and Slash workshop

Christine's

Zita's

Val's

Jenny's - this was her first go at machine quilting, and what a star she turned out to be!

There were also a couple of French Braids:

Zita's

and let's finish with understated elegance,

Sue's.

Plenty more happening and ready to be blogged about.

Have a good week and happy stitching,

Ann ♥

(PS. 25% Mothers' Day Sale in my eBay Store ends Friday morning!)

Stained Glass Stack and Slash Workshop

We've started another workshop for the Stained Glass Stack and Slash quilt the weekend before last. It's at QuiltEssentials in Brisbane and , as usual, everyone came along bright-eyed and bushy-tailed ready for a little quilting adventure.

I'm showing them all before and after slashing and sashing.

The colour/fabric themes varied, with a couple choosing the Oriental style fabrics and large opulent prints

a couple with Bali Batiks

and a couple with the modern Kaffe Collective fabrics.

It was good to see some interesting mixtures of fabric types

and one different coloured sashing. I really like the modern feel this sashing gives to the finished blocks - can't wait to see them finished. Apart from that, I've been working on my small French Sampler for beginners and finally finished the hand quilting

Apart from that, I've been working on my small French Sampler for beginners and finally finished the hand quilting and binding. I added some red rick rack to the final border and appliqued some hexagons onto the corner squares. I like the finished product, even if a bit lighter than my usual quilts - maybe I like it so much because it's a departure from the norm...

Here's Dolly trying it out before I put the binding on (unfortunately it's a bit blurry - but you get the idea...)

Keep inspired,

Ann ♥

Sudoku Quilt

I've made a start on the cute little Sudoku Quilt from the Moda Sudoku boxes I got in last week. This one is Central Park by Kate Spain - love her designs!

I've got the plan to make a really nice Sudoku Quilt and I keep ordering fabrics I have visions of something like that in, but there's always one or two of the colours I want missing. Frustrating:(

Anyway, I've got enough to go on with just now, with the Stained Glass one and the 2010 Closure one still begging to be finished :) It's ready to be basted now and hanging over the back of a chair...I've got a few like that right now. Have fun stitching,

♥ Ann.

Bloggers' Fall Quilt Festival

Better late than never! This is my quilt Zen Courtyard. Park City Girll is hosting a virtual quilt show, you can click on the button to the right, this link or the heading of this post , to go to her blog and see quilt entries from about 400 quilting bloggers! Every time I look there's more.It was really hard to choose a quilt, but it came down to which one I had the best photos of. I designed Zen Courtyard after seeing a shattered nine-patch and thinking there was a better way to make it and carry the stained glass stripping right to the edge. I wanted to use fat quarters and try out quilt- as -you -go which I had never done before and couldn't follow in patterns. I had a lot of ladies in classes at the time who only wanted to make machine made projects. So the quilt is QAYG, completely machine made, intensely quilted, Stack and Slash and contemporary. Even the binding is all in one machine made in Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr's stile from Modern Quilt Workshop.
I loved the Lonni Rossi fabric designs at the time and made a whole lot of quilts with her fabrics. This was and still is , my absolutely most popular workshop and I continue to teach booked out classes for the quilt 3 years after making it. It won 3rd prize Contemporary Quilts, in the Brisbane Exhibition, Quilts Across Queensland, Show and was published as a project in Australian Quilters' Companion. I still get phone calls from people making it from the mag, or asking permission to teach it. (Unfortunately I have also seen it in quilt shows and heard of it being taught with out acknowledgement or permission!)This is a close up of the front quilting. I have become very good at quilting in spirals, and I would say, thanks to this quilt I have become a MUCH better machine quilter.
The quilt is reversible and the quilting looks great on the reverse side. I usually have it this way up on my bed. There's Dolly - she just can't resist a new quilt! You can see the label below and some quilting on the back.
I have also been asked for several commissions of this quilt. The one below is made with Pacific prints for my Papua New Guinea family (In an earlier post).
This one is queen sized and uses some furnishing fabrics as well as the Oriental ones to fit in with the client's decor.
Finally, the last version of the quilt is this small one I made for the Down Under Quilts 2009 Calender competition. The theme was "The wonderful World of Colour" and I based my quilt on Christina Rossetti's poem , Colours. The quilt is made from hand dyed raw silk which I fell in love with and bought a fat quarter stack from Dyed and Gone to Heaven. It looks like very soft suede.The quilt made December in the calender!
Thanks for looking and enjoy the show,

Ann.