A Well-Traveled Quilt and Pillow

It's been a busy summer and I haven't spent too much time with my sewing machine. I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that I sewed up a storm in the spring and needed a break! I took a 10-day trip to England in April to visit family, friends, and -- most importantly -- Liberty of London for some fabric shopping. It had been three years since my previous UK visit and I was missing England, and the people I love who live there, quite a bit. It was a great trip, but I did have some extra baggage with me...

Yes, I decided to make a quilt and lug it across the pond! My dear friends Alex and Annie May bought a flat in London last year -- no small feat. I thought that was deserving of a handmade (er, machine-made) gift. Alex is an Englishman who studied abroad at Lehigh with me for a year, then I studied in his mother country the summer after. He's become one of my closest friends and we've managed to stay in touch despite the miles. (Actually, I see him more often than I see many of my pals who live in the U.S.!) When he started dating a lovely English-born, New Zealand-bred gal a few years ago, there wasn't any doubt we would become amazing friends, too. So, I had it in my mind to make them a quilt after the holidays, hopefully in time for my April trip.

I started on the quilt some time in the late winter -- details are getting fuzzy because it was so long ago! Annie has an eye for art and impeccable fashion sense, so I didn't want any fabrics that were too stodgy, cutesy, or traditional. I decided that some big, bold florals and geometrics would be the thing. Alex has no strong opinions about design or fabric that I know of, but he does have strong opinions about football, so I designed the colo(u)r scheme around his beloved Tottenham Hotspur team. 

The squares are large -- 10 x 10 -- I think, but that's because I really wanted to show off the large prints. I set the rows en pointe (diagonally) to add some visual interest. I didn't make this from a pattern, but I did pull out Amy Butler's Lattice Quilt pattern for reference when it came to the triangles along the edges. (That's the one I used for Drea's quilt way back when!) I quilted in a grid, shadowing the squares as I normally do.

There's really a hodgepodge of fabric in there. I ordered a fat quarter bundle of Camelot Cottons' Mint to Be line in navy, but I think you'd be hard-pressed to figure out which ones came from that line. There's also some Secret Garden fabric by Sandi Henderson that I've had in my stash since I started sewing, a few blenders from V and Co. (another go-to designer for me), and my favorite Joel Dewberry herringbone pattern that ends up in many of my projects. The back is a large polka dot pattern (Michael Miller, I think), and the binding is from Cotton + Steel. I thought the little Xs were appropriate, since that's how Alex and Annie always sign-off on their emails and texts. (It's a British thing!)

My friends seemed really surprised and pleased with the quilt, which currently sits in their lounge, so it was more than worth the hassle of trying to squeeze it into my suitcase for a transatlantic flight. Even better, they had just gotten engaged a few weeks prior, so the gift had a little extra meaning!

But that wasn't the only gift I made. My friends Lisa and Andrew had a daughter, Hattie, in between my visits to England. I made a pillow for Hattie's big sister Abigail when she was born, so Hattie needed one as well. 

I'd been dying to use the unicorn fabric from Heather Ross since I purchased it about a year prior, and I used some other purples and magentas from my stash. I hand-embroidered Hattie's name like I did for her sister, but this time around, I used quilt-as-you-go method for the pillow front. I'm a new convert! Some of my favorite sewing bloggers swear by it, and it is definitely both easy and effective for a project of this size.

It was a delight to meet Hattie, who is now 2, and see how much Abigail has grown up. They are sweet and silly little ladies, and I hope they enjoy their presents from their American auntie.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn't confess to spending way more time and money at Liberty than was strictly necessary. Annie took this shot of the awesome monkey quilt on display and inadvertently captured my super-serious fabric-buying face!

I don't know what it is about Liberty. My tastes in fabric don't usually lean toward dainty flowers, but there's so much history there and the fabric is so incredibly silky-soft, it's hard not to be enamored with it. They are an English national treasure! I ended up with 2 1/2 yards of fabric, a pack of mini-charm squares, and a large dent in my bank account balance. But when in London, right?

Next up: More baby gifts! (Shocker!)

Liberty Hexie Pillow

I've mentioned my love for Liberty on here quite a few times. (Psssst... If anyone at Liberty wants to give me fabric for my free advertising, I wouldn't complain!) On one of my visits to the Liberty store in London in 2013, I bought a variety pack of hexies for use in some future project. They were probably the cheapest thing in the store, and it was the best way to get a bunch of Liberty prints without spending my life's savings on yardage.

When it came down to using them, though, I had no clue what to do! They came with little hexagonal pieces of paper. I did some research and found out that these hexies were meant for English paper piecing. In EPP, you are supposed to fold the fabric around the paper pieces, hand-stitching them into shape using large, loose stitches. Then, you attach the shapes to one another at the edges using tinier whipstitches, being careful not to sew through the paper. Once your hexies form a pleasing shape, you pull out the big stitches you started with and remove the paper pieces. Lots of pressing later and voila! You have a nice, hand-pieced grouping of fabric that's ready to be appliqued!

I started my paper piecing journey in 2013, but I wasn't that into it. It seemed like a lot of work, and my hand-sewing was pretty sloppy. I made a hexie flower out of the blue Liberty hexies I had on hand, then machine appliqued it with navy thread onto an off-white background. This was on my old sewing machine, though, and the applique came out really heavy. (It kind of needed to be, in order to cover all of my inconsistent stitches!) I'm still debating what to do with this, and it has sat among my sewing projects for a while now.

However, during a recent binge of The Walking Dead, I found myself needing some craftiness to keep my hands busy during all of the zombie attacks. I decided to paper-piece all of the remaining hexies (there were fifty total!).

The front of a paper-pieced hexie, ready to be joined to other hexies.

The back of a hexie, with the paper still in it.

These hexies helped calm my nerves during season 4 of The Walking Dead. I only stabbed myself with a needle once or twice during suspenseful scenes.

I made another hexie flower to match the blue one, this time out of purples and dark pinks. I tried to be more careful with my hand-sewing, and my new machine is much better at applique, so the final product came out better than I anticipated! I originally thought I might frame this or make a mini-quilt out of it to hang on the wall, but I had a small cushion on hand from IKEA, so I turned it into a pillowcase.

Close-up of applique stitching. I used plum thread, with two layers of zig-zag stitching around the middle of the flower, and one layer around each of the petals.

The backing fabric is from one of V & Co's fantastic lines of monochrome blenders, and I think the leaves complement Liberty's florals nicely.

Though I really, really didn't need another throw pillow for my bed, I love how it looks with my bedding set and Aviary quilt.

Apologies for the poor lighting. My room is always dark, and I took this one on my phone, which didn't help!

With this success, I think I will try more English paper-piecing. I'm still not sure what to do with the remaining 30-some hexies. Maybe make a memory board? It's hard to commit to anything knowing how precious (and expensive) Liberty fabrics are -- no room for mistakes! But I do have another trip to London planned for April, so I suppose my arm could be twisted to buy more...

Liberty Quilt

If you know me, you know I'm a fan of all things British. I've been to the UK seven (?) times now, with another trip planned for the spring. Over the years, I've fallen in love with Liberty of London -- an old department store near Oxford Circus known for its gorgeous line of fabrics. They mainly produce pricey clothing and decor weight fabrics, so I was super excited to hear about the line of (somewhat more) affordable quilting fabrics they were releasing in 2012. I bought the whole line of Bloomsbury fabrics in the blue color story. (Fun fact: The individual patterns are named after members of the illustrious Bloomsbury Group, including one of my very favorite authors,Virginia Woolf!)

I knew I would use them to make myself a quilt for the couch, but it took me a long time to settle on a pattern and with all of the baby quilts I had been making, it took me a year or so to even cut into the Liberty collection. It took another year to to actually put the quilt together. But here it is!

I opted for a disappearing 9-patch pattern, which I had never done before. It was easy in theory, but took a while to execute. First, I sewed together small blocks in a 3x3 arrangment (the "9" in "9-patch") to create large blocks. Then, I sliced up those large blocks into quarters and repositioned the pieces in a haphazard-looking way (the "disappearing" part of the "disappearing 9-patch"). 

The goal was to showcase all of the prints while giving the quilt a traditional patchwork feel. I still did my best to avoid having similar patterns hit one another in the quilt, though. Once I cut into the fabric, I had doubts about how busy the quilt would be, so I threw in some coordinating solids and whites to accent the patterned fabric. 

Since the quilt is somewhere between twin and queen sized, I couldn't afford enough Liberty fabric to finish out the back. I bargain-hunted for some blue patterned fabric in the same color family as the front. 

I also used a London underground print I purchased a while ago on a whim for a nice little homage to my favorite city: 

I quilted diagonally through the main squares, which lately has been my preferred quilting method. I think it provides a nice contrast to the block patterns. (My quilting isn't as wavy as the photo below might have you believe! It was just a windy day, and the quilt kept blowing in the breeze!)

Finally, I bound the quilt in the navy version of my favorite Joel Dewberry herringbone fabric:

This quilt has been at home on my couch for the past year and has proven to be the coziest TV-watching and nap-taking partner. And every time I see it, I think of England!