Owl Be Watching You

 It took me the first week of January to finish my biggest "debt" from last year. I posted about work in progress on it back in July and finished the top speedily, but then it had to wait for its turn to be quilted.

I designed the pattern specifically to use a sunset-coloured fat quarter bundle and my vision was based on stained glass cathedral windows (as you can see from some of the shapes that make up the background). Every quilter is familiar with the stained glass effect you get if look at a top against light, and here it was especially pertinent.

The pattern is quite complex, with a lot of small bits, but comes together nicely. I was wondering if anybody would be interested to purchase the pattern? I'm planning to start adding patterns to my Etsy shop this year.

The whole quilt is curve pieced, this is a detail of the wrong side of the top in process:

And this is my little helper taking care of the cut pieces:

As usual, it took me a long time to decide how to quilt it; I went for some ornate pattens on the owl, especially the wing...

... mixed floral and geometric patterns on the moon...

... and parallel lines on the leaves and the sky.

This caused some problems with flattening the quilt, but I like the effect quilting gives it.

So, this is the owl finished, and I have a perfect place for it at the top of the stairs, where it is supposed to look like a window (I know you have to have a really vivid imagination to think it is a window) and the owl is watching you every time you climb the stairs.

Linking up to:

Off the Wall Friday at Creation by Nina Marie

Can I Get a Whoop Whoop? at Confessions of a Fabric Addict

The Moonflower Block

We had a great virtual AGMof the Irish Patchwork Society last Saturday, and as usual, one of the highlights was a quilt challenge, this year it was to make a 15'' flower block using one colour only (various tints and shades of it).

Mine was a simple stylised flower in a sort of pinkish-purple colour which I don't even know the name of. Would you call it magenta? fuchsia? orchid? My phalaenopsis is kind of similar.

I was lucky to have a matching variegated YLI thread to quilt the background, it gave the simple block a definite level up.

Well, I thought I would share the pattern for this block in case somebody would like to try it. You can make it into a cushion or use a block in your project, would be lovely to make a whole quilt of these in different colours. You can choose a more traditional colour scheme, though.

It's not that difficult if you are new to curve piecing, and it should be a breeze if you have done some drunkard's path or New York beauty blocks before. The process is described in tutorials for the butterfly block and the hydrangea flower block, it's the same - just remember the matching marks, take your time to pin everything and stitch slowly. You can choose a more traditional colour scheme.

It is assembled in three blocks, and the order of assembly is reflected in part numbering.

You can download the pattern at this link.

A technical note: The overall size of the pattern is 16'' squared, the dash line shows 15'' square,  the reason is this block was meant for a quilt-as-you-go project, so it was quilted and then trimmed to 15,5'', as there is some shrinkage during quilting, I prefer to start with 16''.

I'd be happy to see if you make this block, so please let me know by email or tag me on Instagram @lena.pugachova

Linking up to:

Off the Wall Friday at Creations by Nina-Marie

Can I get a Whoop Whoop? at Confessions of a Fabric Addict

UPD:

I have made the block into a little cushion for my daughter's room.

Green and Grunge

Initially, I planned a wallpapered focus wall for my new living room, then the plans changed. I decided to have a mural instead, but I kept it simple, a stylised line drawing forming a sort of a frame with an empty space in the middle of the wall. And that empty space was meant for... a quilt, of course.

So, here it is, all done, but it's not on the wall yet, so we'll have an interior design update later, and for today it's all about the quilt. 

It follows the bedroom quilt in being purely abstract, more or less Art Deco style art. This one is all about organic shapes and colours, hinting at some kind of plant life, but never totally clear - maybe it's not just plants, maybe it's Life itself? I wonder what you see in there.

For myself, I can say I totally enjoyed the process - from sketching to quilting and that I'm pleased with the result. I chose Moda Grunge fabrics to make it because they seem to fit the aesthetic of my living room and because I was hoping to finish it in time for the Moda Grunge Contest, which I didn't manage. 

It was fun to use so many different quilting motifs with my beloved YLI variegated threads, I had three different green mixes which worked brilliantly with the seven green fabrics, sometimes blending in, sometimes standing out. I even managed to quilt some decent feathers, which I normally find very hard, a confined shape probably made it easier.

One question still remains, though - what shall I call it? The working title is The Green Quilt, which doesn't quite do it justice. Any suggestions?

Linking up to:

Off the Wall Friday at Creations by Nina-Marie

Can I Get a Whoop Whoop at Confessions of a Fabric Addict

The Bedroom Allegory Quilt

This one has been mentioned a couple to times, you can see it in progress here and here, but it has since been quilted, so here's a little update on that.

I wanted to go totally Art Deco with it, pure abstract, although I do regard it as an allegory, I'm just not saying what of, suffice it to say it was meant for the bedroom.

As the shapes are quite simple I wanted to add detail with quilting using a lot of variations on pebbles, spirals, arches and s-curves.

The quilt design is symmetrical, so the quilting had to be symmetrical, too, but I went by the eye, without any templates, so it has "natural imperfections".

I used six shades of Aurifil for the coloured parts, they blended in nicely. Most of the background was quilted in black, with a little bit of colour "spillover" on top.

I even had a little late-night photoshoot with it, to bring out even more drama. Look how a different light direction highlights the quilting texture.

Linking up to:

Off the Wall Friday at Creations by Nina-Marie

Can I Get a Whoop Whoop at Confessions of a Fabric Addict

Harlequin Sunset

 To clear my backlog - here is one my favourite recent quilts, which has not made it to the blog for some reason yet.

I was very impressed by the possibilities of combining layer cakes with stack-and-whack techniques and thought I'd experiment with that some more. Previously, I had used a similar approach with improvised curve piecing, where each 4-piece stack was cut free hand in its own way, you can check out the Airways quilt and the Splash of Neon one. This time I wanted to cut all the squares in the exact same way to be able to mix all the colours more thoroughly.

I chose 16 squares from a layer cake of Fossil Fern, one of my all-time favourite collections, and cut them using a freezer paper template. Then came the most fun part - mixing and arranging and rearranging again.

Then I stitched them together without worrying much if the corners matched perfectly (they didn't!), but at least the whole thing came together reasonably flat. The blocks had to be trimmed, obviously, so it ended up under a meter, nor big at all.

The colours were gorgeous by themselves, but it still needed some focus, so I added some with FMQ,  stitching stylised alliums in variegated dark purple YLI thread.

The background was filled with variegated pinks in arched lines echoing the piecing.

All in all, I am really happy with this quilt - the sunset colours, the curvy shapes (I'm thinking of stained glass cathedral windows, what do you see?), flowers - what's not to love? I think I'll try and explore more grids of this kind.

Linking up to: Off the Wall Friday at Creations by Nina-Marie

Can I Get A Whoop Whoop at Confessions of a Fabric Addict

WIP and the Virtual Exhibition Season

I haven't posted anything for some time now, but I have three quilts in different stages of progress in the works now. I am supposed to be quilting the bedroom quilt, but I got carried away with an idea I had while waiting for the threads to arrive. 

I have had this sunset colours fat quarter pack since last year's Black Friday:

It was about a week ago that I had a vision of an Art Deco-style owl in these colours, and I just had to drop everything and draw the pattern and then start piecing. Most of it is already pieced, and I hope to do a separate post on it next week.

Lots of small pieces, but the curves are quite easy.

The main thing I wanted to write about (because I just can't contain my excitement) is the fact that my Mad Tea Party quilt was shortlisted in the Pictorial category in the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham (the competition is virtual this year).

If you want to take a look at all the competition entires, please visit the festival's website - you'll be in for a real treat, 655 quilts they say, and one better than the next. The competition is real feast for the eyes, and they are taking votes for the Visitors' Choice award at the moment. 

Here's to madness of it all:

Another virtual exhibition on at the moment is held by Tomomi at her website. She usually organises the Quilt Marquee at the Tinahely Show and as the event was cancelled, she decided to have a virtual analogue. There is still time to enter a quilt for anybody living in Ireland and the voting starts next week. I sent a couple of quilts in as well, one was my latest finish - Varvara's owl quilt - and the other, I just realised, I had never published on the blog, so that's another post due soon.

So, there's a lot going on at the moment, considering the doubly quiet season! If you know any other virtual quilting events that are on, please share in the comments.

Linking up to:

Off the Wall Friday at Creations by Nina-Marie

Can I Get A Whoop Whoop at Confessions of a Fabric Addict

Owls and Feathers

Ta-da! A big finish:

This is a bed quilt for my daughter's owl-themed room and I'm so excited to finish it as it has a lot of new-to-me aspects.

As I'm concentrating of curve piecing and developing a kind of Art-Deco inspired style with clean shapes and high contrast colours, I wanted to see how this style can translate to bed quilts. Me daughter's room already has curtains with an owl pattern that I designed and had printed at Spoonflower, and she said she would like a quilt in owl fabrics, too. I searched the Internet for fabrics that would suit the colour and style of our owls and discovered the "Where the Wise Things Are" collection by Quilting Treasures. I ordered two fabrics from it and complemented them by two from "Stonehenge Solstice" collection by Northcott, and I really love how they play together.

I wanted the blocks to have a stylised feather shape as I had the backing fabric with feathers and I am still planning to have wallpaper printed with the same feather pattern. After a lot of sketching and fiddling in Illustrator I came up with a block shape that repeats in rows in opposite directions, so that half of the blocks are in one colour way and the other half in a different one.

The Bedroom Quilt

While waiting for quilting threads to arrive, I decided to piece a quilt top for the bedroom. it was designed and pieced in just several days as it consists of simple Art Deco style shapes.

The colour palette is one I plan for the bedroom in general (as I haven't made a new bed quilt yet). I seem drawn to teals and corals nowadays.

The top is curve-pieced (which is my go-to technique now) but I plan to add texture and interest with quilting.

It will, however, have to wait for its turn to be quilted, as I have another one pinned and ready to go.

Linking up to:
Off the Wall Friday at Creations by Nina-Marie
Can I Get A Whoop Whoop at Confessions of a Fabric Addict
TGIFF at Faith and Fabric