Obsessed with Material Obsession

It's been a week of rough seas for me. But the kind where it's all the more glorious when you find yourself safe on shore. So I'm just keeping my gaze fixed on that shore and reveling in the amazing support of my husband, family and good friends.

And now I also have this to focus on.


Melanie Falick just posted a preview on her STC blog and oh...my...God I am so excited.

Mostly because of this quilt:


I just love it.

And apparently the book is coming out in February so I don't even have to wait that long....

Check out the preview here.

See previews for other upcoming books from STC Craft here.

Join me in blog stalking the "Material Obsession" authors here.

Follow the Lines

(Above quilt & photo by Sasikirana)
Kalin and Lisa were over tonight and I showed them my new sewing books. Lisa was particularly taken with the "Follow-the-Lines Baby Quilt" in Last-Minute Patchwork + Quilted Gifts. This si something I am definitely going to try once I get a machine that can do free motion. It's a great idea, especially if there's a fabric you really really love, you're not crazy about piecing, or you're just plain running out of time.

(Above quilt and photo by Mariarosa)
I told Lisa I'd send her the links to some pics I had starred on flickr, but then I figured I might as well blog about them. I don't know any of the makers and I certainly didn't have anything to do with the making of the quilts. I do however think the work is gorgeous and wanted to give it special attention.


Especially on this last one, the quilting can almost make it look like the designs were appliquéd on. And the same technique can be used to make totally different looking quilts depending on the fabric.

Quilt Fabrics

I've been meaning to post this for a long while, but I actually had to take pictures first. Today I did that so here's the post.

When I was visiting Prince George in October I picked up some fat quarters from a quilt shop. I wasn't quite sure what to do with them. I had some graphic-ish prints, a big bold floral and some batiks. They are worked together colour wise but they actual project was still a mystery.



The fabrics sat in a bag until Christmas when I got my gift from my sister. It was a big gift certificate from a quilt shop out in Surrey called Wineberries (no website or I'd totally link!). I knew I wanted to buy fabrics to complete a quilt with the ones from PG but I needed a pattern first.

So I flipped through the few quilt magazines I have and settled on one from Easy Quilts. It's called Washtub Pinwheels and is a pretty basic pinwheel pattern using one main fabric and 16 fat quarters.

SO I got the the shop with my PG fabrics and the magazine. There they suggested that I pick my main pattern and a only a few other fabrics not the whole 16. They thought it would be ideal for me to go home, cut and sew a lot of the pinwheels and then come back and pick more fabrics when they had the spring ones in and I knew more what colours and intensities I needed to make a unified quilt.

So that's what I did and so far this is my palette:


What you can't see is my main fabric. It's a very light two-tone cream. You can see bits of it in the back of some of the other pictures I took of the fabrics, but it just didn't photograph well on its own.

My next step is to serge the edges of the fabrics and wash them. Then I have a lot of 3 7/8 squares to cut and sew into pinwheels. But first I have to finish the quilt top I already have half done. There's just not enough time for all the projects.