Quilting

Thistle, Daffodil, Flax, Rose - Flowers Quilt Pattern

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Old stained-glass window panes set in stone-grey abbey walls bordered with red tapestries were the inspiration for my Flowers Of The United Kingdom wall hanging. That was the original name because the flowers are the Scottish Thistle, the Welsh Daffodil, the Irish Flax and the English Rose. I started working on this wall hanging with the Scottish Thistle in February of 2013 and slowly worked my way through the other three blocks. The flower quilt patterns took me some time to draw exactly the way I envisioned them.

Welsh Daffodil paper piecing quilt pattern

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Welsh Daffodil was the hardest one for me to design but the easiest to stitch. I wanted a symmetrical design for these blocks and this little flower put up a good fight. This design went through a few iterations before I fell in love with this one.

Scottish Thistle Paper Piecing Quilt Pattern

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Having visited Scotland twice very extensively and having fallen in love with it, I really wanted to make a thistle quilt block. This wild flower instigated the idea of a wall hanging in my mind. Unlike the daffodil, I knew exactly how I wanted to draw this one. Because of the nature of the thistle flower having a lot of corners, this one is the most complex of the four designs.

flax_bag_front

Flax for Ireland was the next one I worked on. I didn’t want a to make a shamrock for Ireland. After asking a couple of friends and looking up reference material, I came up with Flax. This flower was the easiest to draw. You probably already saw this one where I used this block for the first tote bag I ever made. I removed the yellow parts in between the petals from the original design since that was causing the block to have too many points to line up when stitching the two sections together. I wasn’t ready to give up on the original design yet, so I used this extra block for the tote bag and went back to my drawing board.

Irish Flax paper piecing quilt pattern

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I ended up redesigning the block using Y-seam even though I didn’t know how to stitch Y-seam before I worked on this block. I looked up how to stitch Y-seam and trusted my ability to draw a pattern without ever having sewn using that technique before. Y-seam is really not as hard as I thought it would be and it worked out exactly as I envisioned. I couldn’t be happier with the result.

English Rose paper piecing quilt pattern

Purchase English Rose Pattern

Last but not least came the English Rose because I had absolutely no idea how I wanted to draw it. The daffodil was a little easier to draw because of its limited number of petals, whereas I had to work with the shape of the rose. I like what I have here, it was easy to sew and I love the little gingham fabric I used for this one. It was a lucky find!

Thistle, Daffodil, Flax, Rose - Flowers Quilt Patterns

Purchase Stained Glass Flower Patterns

As you can tell, they all share some design elements. I also added some extra details on each side of the flowers, but they can easily be substituted with a single piece of fabric for simplicity. Each central flower block is 6.5″ x 8.5″ with seam allowance and the overall block measures 10″ x 10″. Some of you may remember my showing these finished blocks last year. Then I got stuck at how to quilt this wall hanging and it sat unattended in the cupboard until very recently.

Daffodil Quilt Pattern

One day I was reading in the living room and it started raining outside. As I saw the the raindrops falling and splashing, I had my quilting motif. I drew a set of 0.5″-spaced concentric circles and cut them out with my small rotary cutter. I used them as templates to draw out every single circle before I started quilting them.

Circle Quilting

Once I finished quilting the wall hanging, the name Raindrops On Flowers sounded so much better.

Thistle, Daffodil, Flax, Rose - Flowers Quilt Pattern

I took my time with every single part of this project until it felt right to me and I am so happy that I did. I have never hung any picture over our bed because we live in California and I am afraid that it might fall and injure us during an earthquake. After experiencing an M6 earthquake in August, I was very happy about my decision. That very day of the earthquake I had finished painting our bedroom a shade of light buttery-yellow and a mossy green accent colour on the bed-wall. Now I have the perfect wall hanging for that wall.

As my friend Susie said so aptly shortly after the earthquake, “I can’t help but think that this quilt that you are finishing, reminds me of nature and beauty… with earthquake shocks moving through them…”

Happy Sewing,
-Soma

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Cat Halloween Quilt Pattern

This is Charlie. Contrary to everyone’s belief, he has a sweet tooth that would rival anyone. He would do anything to get a lick of ice-cream, watermelon, sweetened cream, or anything else sweet you can think of.

One day he learned that on All Hallows Eve, if he puts on a wizard’s hat and a bow tie and sits very very quietly amongst the Jack-O-Lanterns, magic leaves will come and carry him to the land of the Seven Sisters who would give him lots and lots of sweets to eat. So he came to me and asked if I would make a hat and a bow tie for him. I was happy to oblige.

Pumpkins Halloween Quilt Pattern

As the evening approached, he wore his starry hat and bow tie, smartly walked outside, sat down in the pumpkin patch and waited very patiently.

Cat Eyes Halloween Quilt Pattern

Charlie has a very bossy sister and two very clueless brothers. Although they keep a respectable distance from each other, they all love to play with Charlie. His sister specially loves Charlie and keeps a wary eye on him at all times. Charlie excitedly told her all about his plan. She didn’t really believe him, but she was not about to let him sit outside all alone either. Who knows what peril would befall her brother! She was also not going to leave the other two out of sight, because then she would have to spend the rest of the night looking for all of them if they got lost. So the bossy sister pushed the disgruntled brothers out the door and all of them surreptitiously waited a little distance away from little Charlie as the sun sank below the horizon.

Fall Maple Leaf Quilt Pattern

They waited and waited and waited some more. Then, when everything had gone quiet, when all the kids had gone home after their Treat-Or-Trick runs and the Jack-O-Lanterns were about to go out, they heard a rustle and a swoosh. Suddenly off they went, all four of them, carried away on gigantic leaves! These were no ordinary leaves, of course! On each one of them, a different adventure waited for the little kitties. They stayed together, hopped around and rolled from leaf to leaf, played and had amazing fun.

Stars Quilt Pattern

All this time, while they were busy playing, the leaves carried them onward and upward to the Seven Sisters. By the time the little kitties got there, they were exhausted. They sat in the midst of stars and each had their favourite food to eat while watching the Jack-O-Lantern-lit Earth turning down below. Charlie had his most favourite sweets to eat that day and nobody was going to stop him. Slowly as the night got deeper, they fell asleep on top of each other and they were carried gently and silently back down to earth, down to their soft, warm beds.

Black Cat Crossing Halloween Quilt Top

My first-ever visit to a Pumpkin Patch

Black Cat Crossing Halloween Quilt Top

I had wonderful time drawing, creating the layout, and designing the patterns for Charlie’s Adventure. I definitely had just as much fun as my little kitties. Charlie was all right with sharing the story with all of you as long as he and his beloved Papa could have the quilt.

Black Cat Crossing Fall Halloween Pillow

At the last minute I also decided to make this little quilted pillow from the scraps. I specially fell in love with the orange scene fabric and I really wanted to showcase it. I will share more detail about the pillow next week along with its measurements so you can make one too.

My Kitty Charlie

Charlie sat here and supervised as I was writing the story. Actually, he was trying to convince me to give him some sweet treats. He was very disappointed when that didn’t work, “Nobody at home ever gives me anything!” So he went off to bed to dream about his special All Hallows Eve adventure while snoozing with his pumpkin. Supposedly the pumpkin gives him sweet dreams. He wanted me to wish all of you a Very Happy Halloween!

I am off to enjoy a little more October magic!
-Soma