Hold Onto Your Heart: The Alternative Border Option

Although I am head over heels in love with the floral rose border, I have also designed a beautiful alternative border that really comes into it's own. This alternative rosette border is a perfect balance of applique and piecing. This month in Part 10 we are making the corner rosette blocks. Here's how I made mine:

Carefully follow the pattern, making sure your pieces to don't 'grow'. To help keep the size in check, start from the outside first and work inwards.

Position the leaves first, then the red petals

When you have joined the pink petals, cut away the centre to avoid bulk as per the picture below

 Then press open all seams and place into position

Next, position the motif so that you can see the centre of your pattern sheet beneath. From this point of centre, start positioning your diamond pieces.

Stitch all into place and position onto the background fabric

This is what the back looks like

 and this is a close up of my centre from the back

 The finished rosette! Make 4x.

     ' Hold Onto Your Heart' is a paid BOM   

It's a breathtaking quilt full of meaningful symbols and beauty. The floral border is a triumph which offers an additional  pieced option - making it versatile for all skill levels. Perfect for lovers and enthusiasts of applique. 

  You can start this BOM today!   

Be sure to visit my Online Quilt Group on Facebook where progress images are being shown all the time. It's a massive inspiration and I warn you, it's addictive!

Hold Onto Your Heart: The Roses

Today it's time to talk roses: I just adore these florals, they're pure romance.The roses you see here are from my gentle quilt, I haven't made my bright and cheerful version yet. Here are the fabrics I selected for my gentle basket. As you can see, I opted for a repetition of fabrics to anchor the basket and the stripes just spoke to me - I knew they'd be my handles when the time arrived.

Given my subtle color scheme, I knew straight away that the roses would have to be charcoal or a soft buttery yellow. After a lot of consideration, I decided that gentle wind blown roses would look the best on this quilt and ended up using Kashmir by Jinny Beyer. It's a gorgeous fabric that really lets these rose heads come into their own. 

Of course, these are just images taken during 'production' at all hours of the day and night. I can tell you that the roses look so much more beautiful in real life than they do on screen, they're simply irresistible. 

As always, preparation is key. 

Follow the pattern sheet closely, making sure none of your pieces 'grow'

Construct your rose heads, layering the pieces to create the full bloom.

For my leaves, I opted to sew the stem line for definition

like so

These beautiful roses are forever and I can't wait to see them in position..

     ' Hold Onto Your Heart' is a paid BOM   

It's a breathtaking quilt full of meaningful symbols and beauty. The floral border is a triumph which offers an additional  pieced option - making it versatile for all skill levels. Perfect for lovers and enthusiasts of applique. 

  You can start this BOM today!   

Be sure to visit my Online Quilt Group on Facebook where progress images are being shown all the time. It's a massive inspiration and I warn you, it's addictive!

Hold Onto Your Heart: Part 10

Part 10 is all about the baskets: I just love this stage of the quilt. There's so much room to really play around and enjoy all the elements and motifs. Once your baskets are done, it's time to work on the roses. But for now, let's focus on the baskets. Here's how I made mine.  

I had a lot of fun picking out these fabrics, they're BariJ and Tilda - somehow I think they mix together really well. 

I start my diamond motif in the centre, following the pattern and build it up from there.

As you can see, all my pieces are pre-prepped. The edges are turned and ready for me to put them into position - this makes the putting together so much easier and I can focus on keeping my motif to the pattern outline - as always, it's important to make sure nothing 'grows' during construction..

 When all the diamonds are down, the handle is placed into position 

and edges are tucked in.

 Remember to keep the top row open so you can tuck the flower stems into position.

 Now it's time to create the glorious rose heads..

check back tomorrow as I show you how I made mine..

     ' Hold Onto Your Heart' is a paid BOM   

It's a breathtaking quilt full of meaningful symbols and beauty. The floral border is a triumph which offers an additional  pieced option - making it versatile for all skill levels. Perfect for lovers and enthusiasts of applique. 

  You can start this BOM today!   

Be sure to visit my Online Quilt Group on Facebook where progress images are being shown all the time. It's a massive inspiration and I warn you, it's addictive!

WOW: Working Out Of Turn

 WOW = WIPs On Wednesdays 

Hold Onto Your Heart is turning into my favourite quilt; the more I work on it, the more I love it. I'm happily making two at the same time and last week I was happy to finish Part 9 on my brightly coloured version - the celebration bouquets. I had planned to then swap back over to my gentle colored quilt, but I find I'm just not in the mood. So although I should be working on the bouquets for my second quilt, I am instead charging ahead with my bright beauty. 

Today I'm making the baskets. I can't help myself, sometimes the quilt dictates the mood and I am in the mood for some bright and cheerful prints. 

Hopefully I'll have time to double back and finish the other so that they're both at the same stage of progress. I don't want either to fall behind in schedule!

What's Your WOW?

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

HOYH: Part 9

This month it's time to create the celebration bouquet; these pics are from my full colour quilt version (as I'm making 2x) and I'm still working on my subtle shaded one!

How bright and cheerful are these fussy cut bloom heads? I had planned to turn them the usual way from a selection of fabrics, but these bright and snappy flowers stole my heart and I decided that maybe I could squeeze in some fussy cutting after all (usually I prefer to make each shape).

I spent lots of time fiddling all the flower heads into position whilst making sure the overall shape wasn't growing. I tried transferring it the usually way two or three times, but kept messing it up. So finally, I arranged the flowers facing upright until I was happy and then I ran sticky tape over them (a gentle scotch tape) to keep everything in perfect position. It's a really useful trick and I can't believe it didn't occur to me sooner.

This is what the back of my flower cluster looks like

 and this is what the back of the motif looks like once the leaves were added

Hopefully my gentle quilt bouquet comes together as easily as this one has...

     ' Hold Onto Your Heart' is a paid BOM   

It's a breathtaking quilt full of meaningful symbols and beauty. The floral border is a triumph which offers an additional  pieced option - making it versatile for all skill levels. Perfect for lovers and enthusiasts of applique. 

  You can start this BOM today!   

Be sure to visit my Online Quilt Group on Facebook where progress images are being shown all the time. It's a massive inspiration and I warn you, it's addictive!

 

WOW: Celebration Flowers

 WOW = WIPs On Wednesdays 

Today I'm back in my studio, working on this month's design for HOYH. I had a vision of myself turning these flowers in the usual way, but when I saw this fabric I knew fussy cutting would be perfect for my bright version. It's such a pretty scene and I'm excited to be preparing the glorious borders next.. it's all going to snowball from here..

OK, back to work!

 What's Your WOW? 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

WOW: Stuck on Applique

WOW = WIPs On Wednesdays

My applique production line has come to a grinding halt today! I'm all out of glue! I sometimes wonder how my love for applique turned into a fussiness for glue.. I'm always seeking out my favorite glues because no matter how many I buy, it's never enough. And although I know - intellectually- that I should buy more, I worry about the glue drying out.. so I'm in a constant glue shopping cycle.

I get asked all the time what my favourite glue is, and I have three: Roxanne Basting Glue (although lately it's stickier than usual, has anyone else noticed this?), Elmer's Disappearing purple in the small tubes and Sewline Glue in the blue version. It also comes in a pink and they're both good, I just seem to prefer the blue.

My usual stockist has been out of stock for 2 weeks, so I did try to be organized and stop this happening, but it happened anyway. So today, I'll be looking for new places to do my supply shopping and tidying up my sewing room which is currently out of control.

 What's Your WOW? 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter