Pop Art Bloomfield Mini Quilt

The Quilter’s Guild of the British Isles is celebrating it’s 40th birthday this year and they are marking this in many different ways. One of them is the 2019 Specialist Group Challenge.

One of the antique quilts from the guild’s collection, the Edwin and Mary Bloomfield Coverlet, has been chosen to be reinterpreted by members. The QGBI has a number of different specialist groups including the Modern Group which I am a member of. Each group has slightly different specifications for the challenge with the Modern Group asking for 20 inch quilts (plus a deadline for entries of 31st March!).

Here is the Bloomfield Coverlet…

Originally I found this quite challenging but I liked the groups of Maltese or ‘Crusader’ crosses and the the fact that they were all at a different scale and looked a little wonky (and therefore modern!).  I also liked the strips that divided them.

My plan was to create a Pop Art style design using this aspect of the original coverlet.

I chose these scrumptious solids and then made the wonky cross blocks using hand drawn improv FPP.  I have used this method before but with my EQ7 software.

The technique is taught by Amy Friend in her excellent book Improv Paper Piecing.  I wrote about the book and my earlier attempts at Improv FPP in this post here. But basically I just drew out the cross and then used a ruler to straighten the lines before numbering the sections and cutting it into 4 areas.

I made 4 blocks this way and then started on the ‘film strips’ as I think of them.

It was fun to play around with this and use improv piecing. So much of my recent sewing has involved writing patterns and explaining everything I make, so it made a nice change. I do really love the freedom of just playing around with fabric!

Here is the top all put together and looking very zingy against my corrugated iron shed wall!

I then decided to machine quilt it with concentric circles, except instead of starting with a circle I started with an off-centre oval to make things a little more modern.  I also left space between lines and inserted hand quilting using Aurifil 12wt wool thread in a range of colours. The machine quilting was stitched with an Aurifil pale grey 50wt.

I then finished the quilt using a faced binding and managed to get the photo emailed a day before the deadline!

I’m hoping this will hang at FOQ in the 2019 Challenge gallery. Apparently if there are too many entries the final number will be selected by the wonderful Lynne Edwards OBE (who I was lucky enough to meet for the first time last month – what a lovely lady!).

Meanwhile there is a way for us all to join in with the QGBI birthday celebrations!  My good friend Sarah Ashford has designed this super fun Party Hat block which you can purchase from the QGBI website here.  Make a block and post it on social media, or organise a group event or sew-in, then send your blocks to the Guild by the end of June so they can all be displayed at Festival of Quilts and then turned into another fundraising initiative later!

It’s a great way to help raise funds for our national guild and be part of the birthday celebrations. Read more about it and purchase your pattern here.

And I’ll be telling you about another quilt I’ll be making to celebrate the QGBI 40th birthday in a few months time…