Quick & Easy Quilts...

Hello and welcome to my turn on my good friend Lynne's blog tour for her new book Quick & Easy Quilts...

I am so super excited to be able to rave about this book. Lynne and Kyle Books have done such an awesome job.

In my humble opinion a quilt book should be full of beautiful enticing quilt photos, projects that you actually want to make and great techniques and diagrams along the way to help making them as straight forward as possible. Quick & Easy Quilts does all this and more.

As you can see from these 4 photos of some of the projects in the book, Jan Baldwin the photographer has done a wonderful job styling and photographing Lynne's beautiful quilts.

These photos are just a snippet of all the fab projects in the book. Lynne has designed 20 projects no less all of which you will ooh and ahh over and want to make.

 The photography is practical too. As well as there being stunning lifestyle shots, each project has a flat shot too which is really important for seeing exactly what the quilts look like. It's such an important feature.

Each project has fantastic clear diagrams to explain techniques and processes. Again for me this is a feature I love to have in a quilt book, as I am much more drawn to following diagrams than text in a pattern. I love that Lynne has put the templates for each pattern within the project rather than all together at the back of the book. It sounds simple but not all quilt books do that and it is so much easier to find what you need.

For this blog hop I was planning on trying out a block or 2 from a project but Lynne's quilts are exactly what they say they are...quick AND easy!...before I knew it I had the whole top for one made and pieced!

I chose Birds Migrating Quilt...or rather my No.1 son chose it...he left for University last September and I had been promising him a quilt to take with him. 2 terms down the line and he was still without one. I was flicking through the book and he stopped me with a "I want that one!" 

I started cutting and piecing that evening and by the following evening the whole quilt top was pieced. It was also made quicker and easier as he said he wanted it exactly the same colours as the one in the book, so fabric selection was pretty straight forward!

I honestly can't praise this book highly enough, and not because Lynne is a good friend, but because it is so good and such a great book to have on your shelves for when you want a quick but beautiful project.

Kyle Books are generously providing a copy of the book for a giveaway so if you would like the chance to win a copy for yourself then just leave a comment below to enter. Any comment will do. It is supposed to be quick and easy after all! I will draw the winner this time next week...Thursday April 14.

Good luck!

Fabric Club 2016

Karen Lewis Textiles Fabric Club is into it's 3rd year...amazing!

With the release of my Blueberry Park Collection with Robert Kaufman, I was unsure whether to continue with the club but I have been told it is very different, by receiving new designs throughout the year with carefully put together colours, it makes it a perfect add on rather than an either or. 

2016 sees a slightly different slant on the club. For those of you familiar with it you will still get a carefully selected bundle of fabrics, screen printed onto Kona with varying designs but to add a bit of spice to the club I have asked some wonderful peeps to join me and curate a bundle each month.

What has resulted is 6 amazing bundles this coming year, each reflecting the personalities of these 6 fantastic people...oh and there's a surprise 7th coming as an extra later in the year...more about that as the year goes on.

First up in January is the awesome Giuseppe. 

Giuseppe is better known as Giucy Giuce on Instagram and is quite simply a rainbow delight and his chosen bundle is a true reflection of his colourful personality! I can't wait to print this up!

As ever Fabric Club bundles are limited so if you want a piece of the action go and sign up and order yours right here. You can sign up for the individual bundle or receive a discount by joining up for an annual subscription. Perfect Christmas present don't you think?!

July Fabric Club...

It's that time of the month again...getting ready for the next Fabric Club edition.

I love producing my Fabric Club bundles. It gives me an excuse to play around with fabric and paint colours just for the hell of it, rather than trying to pick fabrics for a certain project. That is fun too, but this is just full on play with no strings attached.

This month I wanted to do something a little bit different and use coloured ink a bit more, rather than simply printing in white. That's always good too, but I was in the mood for something different.

 I had chosen a Baby Blue Kona to print on, to go with some orange and peach colours, and wanted a grey blue ink to print on top of it. Normally I am drawn to the teal and sea colours in the blue spectrum but they were too loud competing with the orange.

I started off with Wedgewood, one of my favourite pre mixed grey blues, but it was a little bit light and a little bit bright. A hint of grey later and I had turned it into the most gorgeous grey blue that can hold its own perfectly with the loud orange, without competing with it.

And so now with the perfect freshly printed blue panels, I am itching to devise a project to sew with it for!

July Fabric Club bundles are available to order on the website, so if you like what you see click here and order yours now. This is just a little bit of what will be in the bundle...

the rest...for now...is a surprise!

News...

Hello!

I know I know, my blogging is quite catastrophic! 

I am not going to lie...I won't ever get back to blogging how I used to but I will do my upmost to blog weekly and keep you up to date with news and what is going on around these parts.

I do post regularly on Instagram to give you snippets of what I am up to but I do know a lot of you would like more insight and I promise to do that at least weekly.

There I have said it!

As ever, work life is full of exciting projects and wonderful things.

I wanted to share with you a couple of exciting projects I have recently been involved with.

The first is this gorgeous rattle by The Milk Collective. 

Paula and Jaz, the clever ladies behind this fab brand, contacted me a while ago to ask if I could screen print some of their designs. I love it when unexpected things come up. It is so inspiring.

I prepared a screen and printed up the panels and they made this wonderful rattle. 

How cute! 

The Milk Bottle is available to pre order now on their website and they are offering 15% off with the code MILKBOTTLE at the checkout.

I am currently working with Martina of Ava & Neve, a beautiful online fabric store based in Australia. Martina mainly stocks Liberty fabrics but also has a penchant for hand printed and wanted to stock my fabrics to work alongside.

We have worked together to produce 2 collections that will work well with the Liberties she stocks.

I am so very excited to be in Australia and hope the fabrics will be really successful for Martina. So if you are that side of the world and want to be kept up to date with Pre Orders go and leave your details with Martina.

So with my promise of blogging weekly, I guess I will see you here next week!

magic!

Don't you just love it when you discover something really clever that is really simple?

I am quite a lazy quilter...there I have said it...in the sense that I like things to be done quickly. I'm impatient what can I say! It's probably why I like simple piecing.

I am pretty lazy when it comes to pressing too...it's time I could be sewing quite frankly. The downside to that is that it actually takes me longer to sew the pieces together in the first place as I have to align things up more carefully. The conclusion is, there is no such thing as a short cut!

However I was intrigued when I came across this link on Pinterest of Tips for Flatter Blocks.

It is brilliant!

I have never had such flat blocks!

And sewing them together was a breeze, which is no mean feat when most of them were on the bias.

Go check it out for yourself and you will be pleased you did!

And while we are at it...what are your Go To magic tips for making quilting easier? I would love to know!

Quilting...and a giveaway...

One of the reasons for the change of name with my business is due to my actual name being in print.

If you have followed me from Blueberry Park you will be well aware of my book, Screen Printing at Home, that came out in the summer and also seen various projects that I have been commissioned for in Love patchwork & Quilting magazine.

Seeing my name in print more and more and seeing Blueberry Park less and less was the start of sewing the seed for me for the need to change.

It is time to hold my head up and embrace being me rather than hiding behind a label.

I have been loving all the commissions I have been lucky enough to score for LP&Q and this latest one, made with Cotton and Steel fabrics, alongside my own, was such a joy to make.

It came home yesterday and I was so pleased to see it!

When it came home 3 copies of Issue 15 that it is in accompanied it and what better way to start my new blog than to offer you a giveaway!

I will post these 3, accompanied by some of my fabrics that I used to make the quilt...and maybe a selection of others...because I have probably run out of most of the ones in the quilt!

I will ship anywhere in the world, all I ask is that you are a follower of my new blog. Just leave a comment, any comment, to enter and I will draw 3 lucky winners on Saturday.

Good luck and thanks for being here!

xxx