Skip to main content

Seven Owls Quilt [A finish]


I am definitely getting my money's worth out of Elizabeth Hartman's Fancy Forest Pattern. This year I think I've made 6 separate quilts using the pattern or parts of the pattern, and I haven't made the big full size one yet - that's for 2018! This is yet another quilt using the Allie Owl block. Back when I made an Allie Owl baby quilt using just 3 owl blocks, not-so-subtle hints were made by my mother-in-law that she would like one. And then I found the absolute perfect fabric. It's called Feathers and Letters and is by Indigo Fabrics. It's not a make of fabric I'd ever come across before or since, but it was just so perfect that I trusted the shop that was selling it and ordered 3 metres.

In our family, a feather symbolises my late father-in-law, and the colours in this fabric were just so.... Linda! I selected the fabrics for the owls based on the colours in this print. I was pleasantly surprised to find that a bundle of Shot Cottons seemed to match in perfectly. I;m not really a fan of shot cottons - they don't ever seem quite right for my projects, so to find them sitting beautifully in this project made me very happy.


I made up all of the blocks at our North East Modern Quilt Guild retreat in mid-October. I used the living room floor of the cottage we stayed in to wrangle and attempt to pattern match the feathers - isn't it annoying when you finally unfold the piece of fabric to discover that the directionality goes the opposite direction to what you expected. I small tweak of the design and I had a quilt top.




Basting this quilt was hard. I baste all my quilts at a Monday night quilt group, because they have the space. Unfortunately, my mother-in-law goes to the same group. So there was a delay while I waited for her to bugger off on holiday! Luckily she did and I spent an hour grovelling on the floor - she also normally helps me baste, so it was a one-man job this time round. The backing is a bright pink sheet!


I quilted it with an all over stipple: larger scale in the background, smaller scale around the owls.It's bound with a dark purple that wouldn't clash with the border of the owls or the backing! I finished the quilt early in December, but can only show you now that it has been gifted!

This is a finish from my Quarter 4 Finish Along list.

Comments

It's gorgeous! Bravo!!!! *waves pompoms*
Karen S said…
Wonderful finish. Love the selection of fabrics and colours.
Your quilt is amazing.
Marci Girl said…
Wow did you ever get your money's worth out of that pattern! Beautiful finish! Thanks for linking up on behalf of the 2017 global FAL hosts. Hope you will play along with the 2018 FAL as well!

Popular posts from this blog

365 Quilt Challenge 2016 [A finish]

I can't believe I've just typed that heading! When I made the block for January 1st 2016 I could not have imagined the journey this quilt would have taken me on. So make yourselves comfortable and grab a cup of tea, because this blog post may get lengthy! I'd seen the 365 Quilt Challenge on Facebook. I think every quilter on Facebook must have been aware of it. Loads of my friends had signed up and it kept popping up as a "Page you might like" thing. In the end, in November 2015, I joined the group, had a poke round. Decided it wasn't for me. One of the things that really put me off were the fabric requirements: you needed x amount of dark dark fabric, x amount of medium dark fabric, x amount of dark medium, medium, light medium, light, background.... I just couldn't get my head round those requirements. I'd looked at the mock ups on the wesbite and couldn't bring myself to pick a colour. I put it to the back of my mind. But I had obvious

Hidden Agenda [A Finish]

This is very possibly my favourite ever finish - I know I've said that in the past, but this one is going to be hard to beat. This time last year, I attended a day long lecture/workshop with Tula Pink and it was inspiring. Having not really loved her fabrics in the past (but loved her patterns), I suddenly saw them in a new light, linked with my 2018 new year's resolution to try more fussy cutting). Fast forward 8 months and I confess that my Tula stash has expanded quite a lot. I found some UK shops with older ranges of fabric, splurged on a few destashes and found the odd piece of her fabric already in my stash. The plan was always (and remains) to make a Smitten quilt, but I'm well aware that I have plenty of fabric to make other projects as well! So when I saw the Hidden Agenda quilt pattern by Angela Pingle, this fabric sprung instantly to mind.... and we all know I love a rainbow! And what could be better than rainbowfied Tula? I was ably assisted by my friend Ti

February Embroidery Along [A Finish]

I've really been enjoying my embroidery this year, after not doing very much last year. One of the challenges I set myself at the start of the year was to learn to colour tint my fabric before adding the embroidery - I love buying the pre-printed panels, but I'd like to do this myself as well. And the opportunity to learn this arose in February. Meg Hawkey of Crab Apple Hill Studio hosted a stitchalong to celebrate National Embroidery Month, and the first step was colour your fabric. I bought the pencils she advises,  the blending stumps, something called fabric extender and the pigma pen. And I gave it a go. My first attempt ended badly. Because the one thing I didn't buy was a new, clean paintbrush. So when I came to add the fabric extended, it went all bleary and muddy as, despite cleaning the paintbrush thoroughly, it obviously wasn't clean enough. It was unsalvageable so I started again, and I was so much happier with the results. The practice piece was, in

Labels

Show more