England

Red Telephone Box Quilt Pattern | Whims And Fancies

Purchase Red Telephone Box Pattern

I hope you are having a wonderful Spring. My husband and I managed to sneak in a break together before he starts his new job today.

I have been going through some of the photos from last year’s England travel. Considering I made it to England twice within the last six months and am already planning my third visit to Scotland probably indicates how much I love the British Isles. I try to not mention the turmoil of the world here because this is my happy place, but I could not stay away from that this time after reading the news yesterday. My heart goes out to my British friends.

It is a beautiful country full of old history and lovely people. A visit to Oxford was a must because of its beautiful architecture. I fell in love with the vine- and plant-decked Oxford windows. I had the idea of this Red Telephone Box quilt pattern for a long while now. Browsing the photos rekindled the urge of designing this block. So I added a Victorian street lamp along with a lit-up window – an Oxford window, if you will.

A few photos I took of the Oxford windows –

Christ Church College, Oxford England | Whims And Fancies

Christ Church College

Christ Church College, Oxford England | Whims And Fancies

Christ Church College

Exeter College, Oxford, England | Whims And Fancies

Exeter College

Magdalen College, Oxford England | Whims And Fancies

Magdalen College

All these stone structures inspired me to work on this watercolour sketch of a crumbling stone castle in Scotland. I was practising painting the texture of crumbling stones as well as loose-hand painting.

Crumbling Stone Castle Watercolour Painting | Whims And Fancies

Van Gogh Watercolour Paint

I enjoy playing with different brands of watercolour paints. Van Gogh watercolour is a student-grade paint made by a Dutch company called Royal Talens. It is not very expensive, so I was really surprised by the quality of the paint. They come alive even with the smallest touch of water and the colours are intense. The paints blend with each other wonderfully, enabling me to create new colours very easily. They are also quite permanent. Unlike most watercolour paints, I couldn’t easily lift off the colours once they were applied. Something to keep in mind before I put paint to paper next time. I found the included brush to be a bit too stiff and harsh on the paper. I wouldn’t recommend using it at all. However, I highly recommend the paintbox. The colours are also available individually, in tubes.

Red Telephone Box Quilt Pattern | Whims And Fancies

Purchase Red Telephone Box Pattern

I was working on this block around the same time I was dabbling with the Van Gogh paint. Since I love stone buildings so much, I used Stonehenge fabrics for the background. I lit the lamp and the window for a warmer feel.

I pieced the red grid on my red telephone booth. However, for easier piecing, I also included pattern sections without the grid. The grid can be added afterwards via a thick-width machine stitch. The finished block is 12″. The Red Telephone Box quilt pattern is available in my shop, if you wish to make one.

It was nice to take break from the Harry Potter quilt blocks and work on something different. I need a new day/travel bag, this block will be prefect for that.

Stay well,
-Soma

Luckily this was also my one monthly goal, which I am happy to say I have accomplished. I am linking up with –

Elm Street Quilts One Monthly Goal Finish March Linkup

I am also linking up on Life Thru The Lens, Through My Lens, Our World Tuesday, Wednesday Around The World, and Friday Photo Journal along with other linky parties on my Events And Links page.

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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

Purchase Welsh Daffodil Pattern

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

Purchase Scottish Thistle Pattern

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

Purchase Irish Flax Pattern

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

Cast In Stone

Van Gogh Watercolour Paint

Raindrops On Flowers