Author: charlottenewland

Blogger’s quilt festival – Original design

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Hello and welcome, especially if you are visiting from the Blogger's Quilt Festival. I'll put the kettle on. Everyone else can make your own - you're family. I've decided to enter my Migration quilt into the Original Design category. The blocks for this quilt were made to my rather persnickerty requirements by my wonderful friends in Bee a Brit Stingy. I really love the cohesive scrappiness that comes from having a fairly strict colour scheme but no other control over the fabrics used. I tried not to obsess too much over the placement of the blocks and just aimed for a balance of values across the top, and I am so glad I did. I can waste DAYS faddling about moving blocks around, and [Read more...]

Fortitude

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The brewing is finished, and I'm left with (if I may say so myself) a pretty good artisan beer. If you follow me on Instagram (@charlottequilts) then you might have seen more pictures of this than you can stand, but please bear with me while I show some taken with an actual camera. The idea had always been to matchstick quilt the hell out of this thing, both to attach the shreds of fabric and to add more layers to the colour gradation. I used five shades of Aurifil (40 wt) ranging from white to black, with three greys in between. Luckily, the extreme smallness (15 x 16 inches) of the piece meant that this only (HA!) took about three or four hours. I take my hat off to anyone who [Read more...]

Quilt brewing

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No, that's nothing to do with beer (although I wouldn't say no). It's more about the way things seem to grow in my brain. Little idea bubbles coming to a head in the form of crappy pencil sketch. Then the stash raiding and cutting fabric into tiny little shreds. Followed by something that kind of resembles the thing in my head. Or at least it will after I've done an awful lot more to it.

Editor dress

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Because it's black and white and red all over! Geddit? Geddit? Oh, and it's covered in typewriters. That might have something to do with it. One of the perils (if you can call it that) of teaching at The Village Haberdashery is that I am in the shop all the time and consequently end up wanting everything. A few weeks ago there was just enough of this amazing typewriter fabric in the sale section to make a Deer and Doe Belladone dress. It was fate. I added piping at the waistband and on the pocket edges to match the bias binding around the neck, back and armholes. Kona Rich Red was the perfect shade to set off the black and white. I finished the hem with bias binding instead of the [Read more...]

Bloody hell, a finished quilt!

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My Migration quilt is finished! I'm so pleased with how it turned out and it didn't take long at all. Of course, that's what happens when the world's best bee mates make most of the blocks. I'm really liking this bee thing. I whacked the blocks up on the design wall fairly randomly without thinking about it too much and tried to minimise the faddling about with rearranging that normally lasts at least a week. I'm really glad I did - over thinking these things can take a lot of the fun out of the process for me. As it was, I had this arranged, sewn together and quilted in about six hours. The binding took the rest of the evening (I just can't not hand finish a binding - it's a slight [Read more...]

Fourteen

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Rachel, it seems like five minutes since you turned thirteen. Please stop growing up so fast. Not only is it making me feel old, but your little-girlness is slipping away at an alarming rate. I dread the day when you no longer want me to wait "just a sec, just a sec" (spoiler alert - it never is just a sec) while you get ready for bed so that I can tuck you in. I feel it now, that cutting of the umbilical cord. Your perfectly natural and appropriate independence. But you are my baby, my first, my little girl. I remember the teenage years being hard to cope with as a teenager, but I never realised how hard it is as a parent. Next you'll develop an interest in dating, god help us all. But [Read more...]

More dressmaking

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I had an "aha" moment the other day when I realised why I've been doing so well on my no-quilting-fabric-but-dressmaking-fabric-is-totally-allowed plan: I have suddenly turned into the world's most prolific dressmaker. It's a veritable sweatshop here. And then there are all the totally quilt-worthy leftovers that don't count as fabric purchases because they are scraps. See? Genius! This weekend was a whirlwind of pattern tracing, full bust adjustments (I can do them without looking at tutorials now) fabric cutting and frantic sewing together of garments. I've got another dress waiting in the wings and two others are yet to be photographed, but without further ado, I present to you: 1. [Read more...]

Small beginnings

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I've been following Kristy's blog for a while (she of the amazing David Tennant pixellated masterpiece), and have really enjoyed reading about her early quilts. So in the spirit of shameless copying, I present several of mine:1. First ever quilt. This teeny thing (i.e. too small to be of any use at all) was made in 2001, back when the only teach-yourself-to-quilt resources were depressingly old-fashioned books from the library. On the plus side, the piecing is pretty good (those logs finish at 3/4") and it's hand quilted. On the negative side, the polyester batting makes me want to cry. The kids love it though (in a that-was-the-first-blanket-you-made-me kind of way), so it can't be all [Read more...]

Ode to an ‘E’ cup

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I've been sewing the clothes for Annie's shop window for a couple of months now, and this time round she suggested I might like to make something that I could wear once it's finished doing its duty. Together, we picked the Mortmain dress in teal squared elements with a big-ass metal zip. The Mortmain pattern is beautifully presented and very well written, so I couldn't wait to get to it.Of course, the massiveness of the buzzoomz meant doing my first ever FBA. The interwebs is full of useful (but slightly conflicting) advice on how to do this, so after falling down the rabbit hole for several hours I finally settled on this tutorial, mainly because it made the most sense to me at the [Read more...]

Love and monsters

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In case you were thinking that all I achieved on the debauched weekend away was making Kelly finish my scrappy tripalong, here is some photographic evidence of other stuff.First, the love. An improv scrap block for Alison's Soy Amado project, backed with backing/batting offcuts from the tripalong. Fun and quick to make - I see more of these in my future.Secondly, the monster. I pieced the rest of the Meadow and got the bugger basted on the (thankfully) very large tiled floor. I was a bit worried that I would run out of spray baste half way through, but there was just enough. It is 100 x 112 inches (2.5 x 2.8 metres) and is going to take an age to hand quilt. RSI, anyone?And finally, I made a [Read more...]