CHARM ABOUT YOU

If you didn't know already I am totally addicted to hand sewing and have made more progress on my green tea and sweet beans quilt. These blocks have all been hand pieced (no paper), apart from the odd bit of English Paper Piecing where I chose to change up the design.

My second tulip block:


Rather than use the appliqué shapes in the original pattern (they just look too egg like for me!?!) I decided to do English Paper Pieced shapes for the flowers in the appliqué blocks. So here's my first finished block:


I am working on the orange peel appliqué blocks now, I have been using trusty Aurifil 50wt #2600 to piece all the blocks and it works beautifully for the appliqué too:


Fancy seeing my progress so far? Obviously this isn't how they'll look together in the end and you can really tell that I've just been picking fabric and working on one block at a time. I might need to work more dark fabrics into it to balance it more:

Here's a weird lighting shot so you can better see the glitteryness!

It will need trimming along the sides and of course I will be hand quilting it. I have a quilting plan and Aurifil thread ready to go!


There's 5,467 pieces in this quilt top... ok kidding I haven't got time to count them!! But it's a lot. All the papers were cut out from printer paper, then hand basted and hand pieced with Aurifil 50wt 2600 and 2610.


All done by hand and all done by me, except for one beautiful block made by my wonderful friend Nicky - she made the one on the bottom right in the picture above and she also made me about 5 of the 'alien' connecting shapes because she's awesome :)

I haven't quite finished taking out all the papers but I'm just pulling those basting threads by hand and it comes out easily, most of the time I took them out as I made each block but some have remained from connecting them together.

There was very little thought put into this quilt. In the sense that I decided to use solid colours (orange, pink, mint, grey and beige) in the centres and I used a stack of fabrics I liked but I just put them together one by one in combinations that I liked. There is very little fussy cutting, I tried it and I love the effect but for the most part I just cut totally randomly. I didn't play around with the layout, I just started sewing them together. Then I realised you can put them in rows so that's what I did. Putting them together is much faster when you work in rows - one rose star, two alien shapes, one rose star, etc.

To finish it off I decided to have the rose stars almost floating by using kites and half hexagons to get to the point I could just use full hexagons. I was going to do more hexagon borders but honestly this quilt top is big enough as it is and I like how the rows of rose stars look like they're stacked on top of each other, kind of higgledy-piggledy.

It's random, eclectic and all mine!


The rose star tutorial is by the amazing Clare - my love of English Paper Piecing is all down to her and this brilliant pattern. This was the very first English Paper Piecing I attempted, I have finished other projects along the way but this quilt holds my first block. Is it weird that fact almost has me tearing up?! I adore this quilt top so much. I totally recommend going and visiting Clare's inspiring blog selfsewn, she also has an English Paper Piecing tutorial if you'd like to start doing some yourself.

You can see more fabulous rose star blocks and quilts in the Flickr group.

Linking up:


at Quilting Mod this week
and finish it up friday at Crazy Mom Quilts