CHARM ABOUT YOU

I want to make every quilt in this book. The Seedling Quilts book is one to be savoured. I was thrilled to be asked by Jodi of Tales of Cloth to join the book tour as she has been an inspiration to me since we became blogging friends. I have always admired her sewing style, the way she combines fabrics and I LOVE her writing (so much I have actually embroidered a poem she wrote). She is endearing, interesting and very talented. 

It's no surprise then that this book is full of all that - gorgeous quilts, excellent advice, tidbits and stories of the herbs that the patterns are based on. There are 11 quilt patterns in the book but it's more than that, you can easily just make blocks or create sections based on the designs to use in other projects too.

I made the Peppermint pattern using Jodi's paper pieces, you can order kits of the papers for all the quilts in her shop. Choosing fabrics was not hard, they just jumped out of my stash at me. The grid print was the starting point because I thought the background of the pattern could look like a trellis for the plants to grow up.

The block were simple to sew, pre cut papers mean the pieces are super accurate. I took basted pieces with me on a train journey and snuck in sewing a block here and there. These could get addictive. Once I had made enough it was time to arrange the blocks and sew them together.

As I was making the blocks I realised that I didn't want to have to cut them top or bottom, which the original quilt pattern calls for. For a larger piece it makes sense but as this was a cushion I didn't want to lose any edges to the seam allowance. Appliqué is the best answer for me. I can keep the piece complete and it was a way for me to tame the (slightly busy) use of grid. The perfect background fabric was the one I picked up at the festival of quilts. Then there was the decision of how to do the appliqué and quilting. My favourite way is to quilt the background and then add the appliqué. It's something about the texture of doing it that way that I really like.