Pop Art Dandelion and a Quilted Jacket

I managed to (sort of) have two weeks off at the start of July.  Running your own business from home means it’s hard to take a break without physically leaving home but I live in such a beautiful place that I don’t want to go anywhere else!

So instead I try to avoid emails and computer work and just do fun sewing (even if that sewing is kind of work related). It’s the perfect opportunity for me to begin a few projects I’ve been thinking about and not had the time for.

And I did manage to start 4 different new projects! And I even finished one! This post is going focus on the two work related projects and I’ll leave the other two for future posts.

By now I’m sure everyone knows about The Thread House Academy, the online teaching school I run with Karen Lewis and Lynne Goldsworthy. We are just about to enter our second term this year and the theme is Stars.

Lynne is up first with a quilted jacket class. She will show you how to make a stunning lone star quilt and then turn it into a quilted jacket! I had to have a go at this but couldn’t face making a quilt and then cutting it up!

However I do have a massive bag full of orphan blocks donated by Karen (who seems to compulsively start new things only to abandon them after a block or two!).

Karen has a very distinctive and restrained colour palette which makes her left-overs absolutely perfect for putting together and especially for a wearable garment.

So I pieced together blocks to make panels slightly bigger than the pattern pieces and then spray basted them onto wadding and backing before quilting them on my Handi Quilter MoxieXL.

This was also a great way to get some practice in with my Modern Improv Doodle style of quilting ahead of the Modern Quilting Live lecture/demo I will be giving at Festival of Quilts next week!

Once quilted the pattern pieces were trimmed and made into this snazzy jacket! It’s quite roomy but for someone who doesn’t really do dressmaking I’m happy with it. Saying that I also made the linen ‘Edie’ top I’m wearing underneath which is a Merchant and Mills pattern.

That’s not the only garment I had the chance to model on the day I took these photos. I have also been working on a crochet shawl and finished it recently too (and you can see the Edie top better in this shot).

This is the Creadan Shawl by Annie’s design Crochet. I have a lot of Drops Alpaca 4 ply that I bought for the doomed Temperature blanket I was going to crochet in 2022.

As I gave up on that project after completing only January I thought I better start looking for something else to do with the wool. I love crocheting but already have too many crochet blankets (most of which are documented here in blog posts). In fact here’s a recent photo of them to prove it!

They live in my bedroom now in this delicious stack and make me very happy. But still I don’t need any more!

So I have started crocheting garments instead and I absolutely love this shawl. I will probably make another one soon as I have so much wool and it was so fun!

As I said the theme of term 2 is Stars but I really wanted to teach my freehand foundation piecing technique this year and was struggling to make a proper star with it.

So instead I made a supernova quilt (above bottom left)! This uses the same techniques as my Dandelion Clock and Sea Urchin Temperature Quilts but mixes them together. So with this class you actually get 3 for one!

I have been thinking about a new version of the Dandelion Clock quilt for a while and finally got a start on that in my break.

This will be called Pop Art Dandelion and the twist is that the dandelion petals are nestled inside each other in layers.

I started with that first quarter and yesterday I finished the other three for the full block.

It’s bold and bright and a little crazy! The plan is to make 3 more in bright contrasting colours to make a Pop Art style quilt à la Andy Warhol. The block above is 24″ so it should be 48″ finished. And I will be covering this little twist on the block in my online class.

You can buy Lynne’s Quilted Jacket class now as a single class OR as part of our Term 2 pass which is on an Early Bird offer with 20% off until 31st July (and includes my Supernova class and Karen’s amazing Night Sky hand pieced quilt).  Lynne’s class goes live on August 1st.

My Supernova class will also be available as a single class but not until mid September (class will be live on October 1st).

Head to our website here for more on the Academy.

We are also just about to launch our Retreats for 2025 with tickets going on sale on Friday at 2pm. Next year we are hosting 3 retreats – in January, March and September. read more about our retreats here and get ready for the release!

And a little more news which is especially for local readers… Can you believe it’s 10 years since I founded the Edinburgh Modern Quilt Guild?!

To celebrate this momentous anniversary the guild are hosting a weekend exhibition which kicks off with a talk by yours truly!

I’ll be putting together a brand new presentation talking about the history of the EMQG and the initial sparks that got it started. I’ll be bringing tons of my quilts for a trunk show too. If you can’t make the talk why not come along to the exhibition? All proceeds will go to Maggie’s Centre Edinburgh.

The talk is Friday Oct 4th and exhibition Saturday/Sunday 5-6th. Goldenacre Bowling Club, Edinburgh. Email for tickets emqgexhibition@gmail.com

One last thing!  Are you going to Festival of Quilts next week? If so please do look out for me and say Hi! If you want to make sure you catch me then come along to my Meet and Greet session at the Aurifil stand E67 on Thursday at 12.30. I will be bringing my fabric books and some of the new Folk Art Dream Bird Dolls I’ve been making (more about these in a future posts).

All my FOQ classes and lectures are sold out except for Modern Quilting Live which is at 10.45 on Thursday morning in the big theatre. Click here for tickets. I hope to see you at one of these events!