Fireworks Quilt by Lucy Brennan Charm About You solids quilt

Big, bright, bold blocks make up this Fireworks quilt I designed. It was fun mixing up the warm toned fabrics and the 14" blocks repeat to create an explosion of light against a dark navy background. The quilt is 56" square, I seem to have a thing for square quilts... they do work well for lap quilts.

Fireworks Quilt by Lucy Brennan Charm About You

I quilted in using my favourite straight line pattern, cross hatch, in a bright yellow thread to continue the theme. You can see the Sewing Quarter demo here.

When I get time I intend to recreate this using print fabrics, it would be cool to see how different it would look and those rectangles are calling out for some fussy cuts! I will have to see what I have in my stash that would work... ummm... I wonder!

Fireworks Quilt by Lucy Brennan Charm About You

A very sweet baby quilt next. I demoed this on Sewing Quarter too, the pattern is by Victoria Carrington. It's an adorable way to show off the panel, featuring illustrations by Anita Jeram from the book Guess How Much I Love You by Sam McBratney.

Guess How Much I Love You quilt

I added 3D pinwheels to each corner in the mustard spot, they look like the twinkly stars from the print. Unfortunately there were some fabric hare casualties during the making of this quilt.

Guess How Much I Love You quilt pinwheels

Where I could I added in fussy cuts though and the size of the squares worked well with the prints to allow some cute hare cuddles!

Guess How Much I Love You quilt panel

Guess How Much I Love You quilt fussy cut

Guess How Much I Love You quilt fussy cut

The next project was a bit more of a challenge. There wasn't time for me to do embroidery, so I improvised to create a project from the book Redwork Blizzard Buddies by Pearl Louise Krush. I chose three of the larger designs, machine stitched them and sewed a wall hanging.

quilted wall hanging flying geese and machine stitches

It's not the same effect as embroidery but I certainly had fun playing with the decorative stitches on my Elna 680 machine, many of which I hadn't used before! The memory function was really helpful to allow me to add details like the decorative stitches on the door and the snowman's buttons.

decorative machine stitches

decorative machine stitches

The flying geese trees frame the panels and it makes a nice wintery hanging. I used more decorative machine stitches to quilt the runner. Along the sashing and in the border.

decorative machine stitches wall hanging

This stitch, mode 2 #19 on my machine has become a firm favourite for quilting. It's so pretty and looks different when you play about with the stitch width and length. I enjoy stitches that are changeable like that. Maybe because it feels like you get more out of it!

quilted border machine decorative stitch Elna 680

Finally one last quilt, I forgot to photograph it myself and Chris the Floor Manager was kind enough to send me this picture! This is a tumbling blocks quilt, using the Red Blocks pattern from Kaffe Fassett's Quilts in Italy. Rather than use the templates in the book I devised a way to use my Creative Grids rulers to cut all the shapes. It worked perfectly I am really happy with how the quilt turned out. You can see the demo here (as well as see me shaking pumpkins on my head!).

Tumbling Blocks Quilt Lucy Brennan Charm About You Kaffe Fassett pattern

I hope you're all enjoying a lovely weekend, maybe with some sewing time?
I'm currently busy on instagram, co-hosting the fun filled photo challenge #missingmarket2018 - organised by @gogokim and @misterdomestic. There are brilliant giveaways and it's a great way to meet new sewing friends, so head HERE and join us!