Folk Dance Quilt – the story

A few weeks back I told you about The Thread House Club and our Folk Dance Quilt. Since then I have finished my version of the quilt and caught up with my two partners, Karen and Lynne.

Last week Karen came for a visit while on holiday in Scotland. We knew this was the perfect opportunity to get a group photo so Lynne sent her quilt up to me in the mail and luckily the weather played nice and we got this fabulous image of all three versions of the quilt! From left to right it’s Karen, Lynne and me!

We all chose a different palette of solid fabric to make our quilts and I chose Makower Spectrum Solids for mine. We also gave each version a name, mine is Pistachio Sundae, Karen’s is Peach Bellini and Lynne’s is Mint Frappe.

I’m absolutely delighted with my finished Folk Dance Quilt even though I did finish it in a bit of a panic to catch up with my pals! There are 3 recognisable mistakes, but I am only annoyed about one of them (which I’m not pointing out but can you spot the ‘Amish mistake’).  I got the hare round the wrong way but then so did Lynne so I think we will just say that Karen got that wrong 😉

And my rooster was placed a bit high on the block and I was in danger of cutting off his coxcomb with the binding. So I unpicked it a little and then after binding I sewed it back in place to give a 3D effect! I think it looks quite cool so I am going to own this one!

I quilted it with Aurifil 40wt in neutral shade 2026 and a similar interlocking square FMQ design that I used for my Shutter Speed quilt.

I thought it might be nice to talk about how we went about designing this quilt together and what our initial inspirations were.

Karen and I had been working on an idea for The Thread House Club and a BOM since last Autumn and had a range of block options to choose from but were struggling to make them work together. We knew we didn’t want a standard symetric grid though and  when I saw this piece of street art in Austin while visiting QuiltCon earlier this year, I snapped it for inspiration. This was the kind of thing we had in mind.

And then a magical thing happened, Lynne came back to the fold and brought her wonderful energy and quilt design genius with her.  Soon we were cooking on gas and really getting somewhere, sharing ideas on zoom meetings and in our WhatsApp chat group.

We started to share other items that we loved and that we wanted to evoke in the design. On the left is a tray that I bought in Stockholm. Scandinavian design has always been a strong inspiration for me. On the right is a tin that Karen owns, designed by Sanna Annukka, whose art has the kind of modern folk art vibe that we all loved.

At this point Lynne and Karen took to Touch Draw to start drawing up our ideas and inserting our blocks. Here is an earlier version of the design. You will be able to recognise some of the blocks that we kept and any we didn’t use have gone back in the cupboard for future quilts.

This version is bit busy and the colours a little dramatic but we were loving where it was going.

Karen is really good with TD but Lynne is a like a zen master.  I am like the serving girl who sweeps out the temple and has picked up the odd instruction by eavesdropping on them occasionally.  So basically I had very little to do with all this part of the designing.  But I did draw up the rooster and hare blocks by hand as I love drawing.  That wasn’t quite enough though so in return I am in charge of the website which no one else wants to do! And that’s really how we work together, each of us bagsies the job they are happy to do and luckily for us these all happen to be different jobs!

We are all so proud of the finished Folk Dance quilt but we also loved the journey we took to get there.

Karen dragged her beautiful hand quilted version of the quilt all over South East Scotland looking for the perfect backdrop to set this gorgeous quilt off. And she found it!

Not only are we delighted with our quilts but we are also over the moon with the reaction the BOM and Club idea has received!

We opened the Private Facebook Group last week and shared our Bonus Project patterns. To get us all warmed up before the Folkdance BOM officially starts we thought it would be fun to make a little set of handmade notions. And what better subject to use than our cute little house logo?

Lynne designed a similar version of this block for our mini themed Virtual Retreat 3. But she has re-designed the block so that it matches our schoolhouse logo perfectly. There is Lynne’s essential pincushion, Karen’s handy needlecase and I’ve made a little storage pot or thread catcher.

The BOM starts in October with the first block pattern dropping on Monday 12th. That still leaves plenty of time for you to join in! If you want a reminder of exactly what is involved this is the place to go. And if you want to purchase membership then head straight to the product page here.

Why not join us for Friendship, fun and the Folk Dance quilt!!