Modern Applique Garland

How lovely do these photos look taken in the Autumn sunshine! Meanwhile in the present depths of our Scottish Winter I have forgotten what the sun looks like! It has been grey, wet and miserable for so long now and with no hope of a reprieve in the near future *sigh*.

So I am firmly indoors and having a massive clear out of my sewing room and bedroom (I have filled 12 bin bags already and I haven’t finished yet! Don’t worry everything is being distributed and recycled responsibly).

But I have broken off the surprisingly hard work to catch up on some blog posts.

Here is a little mini quilt I made for a swap between our Edinburgh Modern Quilt Guild and Melbourne Modern Quilt Guild. This was the first group swap we had partaken in. We were paired up with partners who would also make for us, so not secret partners, and therefore couldn’t share anything until after they’d received their mini.

I was paired up with lovely Kim who is Simpson and Scarlett on IG. Kim asked for mustard yellow, red and orange and also that she liked mid-century modern. Well I have to admit that though I have heard this term a lot I had never really been able to recognise it easily in an aesthetic way. So I turned to google images and found a textile pattern that I thought would work really well as a patchwork block.

I made four blocks and sewed them together and was delighted with the effect. So much so that I decided to submit the design to the MQG for the QuiltCon magazine (published by Modern Patchwork). And amazingly they selected it!! But with a very tight deadline, which meant I needed those original four blocks for the quilt, and I then needed to keep schtum about it so couldn’t have sent it to Kim anyway. So…

This meant I needed a new mini for Kim pronto as that deadline was looming too! I looked back through some recent pieces and found this large applique block I had made in the summer when I was in a ‘use everything up’ mood. Those leaves are all made from the scraps that the Sizzix Drunkard’s Path die leaves behind, and I had saved them from my Squaring the Circle Quilt knowing they would make perfect applique leaves.

Gorgeous fabrics in two of my fav colours, hand stitching, Bearpaws, and a little ‘code’ around the border! Those HSTs actually spell Jo Avery in patchwork language (is in higher and lower case letters), isn’t that cute!! Thank you so much Kim!

Everyone in our guild loved the quilts they received, I am sure we will be swapping more with other MQG groups in the future. You can see all the other quilts in a couple of posts on our blog.

I do love the way the mini looks against our sun drenched barn door. One last look and then back to dark January and my chaotic sewing room!