A Forest of Poplars!

I’ve spent the last few weeks getting ready for my next online class for The Thread House Academy.  It’s my first of this academic year and it’s Poplars!

You can read all about the original Poplars Quilt, and it’s genesis, in this post here, and also the first batch of Poplar class samples I made at the start of the year in this post here.

But recording videos for the online class means creating a whole new set of class samples which I thought I would share with you today.

This also means I get to share some pics from my newly finished bedroom!  Regular readers may remember that last year we embarked on a huge house re-building programme (you can read about it here). This is still very much ongoing with the crashes and bangs of demolition around me as I type this!

However we are happily living in the (almost) finished part of the house and it’s absolutely heaven! My bedroom is especially amazing and last week the perfect finishing touch arrived – an orange velvet armchair!

So when I needed to photograph the new Poplars cushion sample I had the perfect backdrop. It’s a big chair so I even managed to squeeze both class sample cushions on (left).

The original Poplars Quilt also happens to be my current bed quilt.

I had intended to make a new bed quilt (and had even started it a few years back!) but this giant quilt works so well in here and the colours go perfectly with the rug and the chair so for now it’s staying put.

I also made a new mini quilt as part of the online class.

I quilted this with the same vertical wavy line as the large quilt but then filled in spaces with extra lines of hand quilting using the new Aurifil 8wt cotton thread.

Finally I wanted to show that a scaled down version of the block was possible so I made this mini landscape and, after machine quilting with Aurifil 28wt, I turned it into a large project pouch.

I needed something for the back and so had a search through a huge bag of orphan blocks that Karen Lewis had given me last year. I intend to make lots of beautiful charity quilts with these blocks but so far I’ve only scratched the surface.

Every time I look in it I am so overwhelmed by the beauty of the pieces and the sheer amount in there that I have to back away quickly! I did grab this cute triangle block (which perfectly illustrates Karen’s amazing use of fabric and colour) and now it’s become one half of the pouch I can’t decide which side I like best!

You can find a free tutorial on this blog for the Project Pouch, it’s in this post here.

This pouch is a little bigger than my usual, measuring W14″ x H12″, and is the perfect size for my new crochet project. I am using up some of the Drops Alpaca 4 ply yarn that I bought for a Temperature Blanket a few years back (which I quickly abandoned) to make a new shawl.  It’s so soft and the colours are lovely and I’m on a mission to use up my wool stash right now so I think a shawl is the right solution.

I got the pattern from Ravelry, it’s called the Creadan Shawl and it’s by Carmen Heffernan.

If you’d like to make some Poplar blocks with me and learn the techniques used for these Freehand Curve Landscapes then the single class is available to buy right now from our website here. 

You can make one or more of the smaller projects or start making blocks towards your own full size quilt! You can also purchase this class as part of the Term 1 or Annual Pass, head to our store here to find out more. Either way the Class will be LIVE on Saturday 1st June. I do hope you can join me!