London's calling

There are a lot of pictures in this post - I had time to sew and I made some samples to swap at the Fat Quarterly Retreat sample swap. By the way, if you are going to the retreat and have not joined the flickr conversations, do head over and join in by clicking here.

 (As an aside, in my head I hear "It's my party..." which was recorded first in 1963 by Leslie Gore, this is a Youtube link - whenever I get self indulgent and go on and on and on, this song appears.)



These mini quilts were inspired by Red. They about 7.5 - 8" x 9 - 10" and are made of Oakshott shot cottons and Essex Linen/Cotton in putty. The coloured threads are variegated cotton King Tut from Superior Threads, and the putty coloured thread is a nice 50 wt putty coloured hand dyed cotton thread from Valdani Inc.



This one is Saffron.



I like them both ways up. Originally I thought they would be mug rugs, but you could also put them on the wall.



The colours are wonderful, you can see a bit of the shine.



This one is Crimson. There are a great number of different shades of red in Wikipedia - and that is just the fastest reference I checked. I can make a lot of minis and still have names.



I made each one different yet they are all basically the same.



I am totally smitten with these. They are even better in person.



This one is Blood Orange.



The colours in this one really are so rich.



I washed them all today. The washing changed them from ho hum ok to amazing. They were sort of twisted into little balls when they came out of my dryer, but I wet them and steamed them a little and put them under books - all better.



Meet Pink.



I made Pink first. She has a lot of the shiniest shot cottons.



You can see the shine best in this picture. Maybe it is time to learn more about photography so I can learn how to capture shine and light in fabrics.



I shall only torture you with one back, so that the process types can see what I did. I quilted the coloured block first, turning at each end to avoid a lot of threads. Then I quilted the rest. The binding and back are also Essex linen - only the best for my sample swap group. The binding was made single fold and hand stitched on the back.



You can bet I am making more of these, although this is all I need for the swap. Making these minis chased away the poison of my work week and are making me smile.

I am linking this post up to Megan at Canoe Ridge Creations' {Sew} Modern Monday. For Tuesday I am adding a link to Fabric Tuesday over at Quilt Story. There are always beautiful projects there, do go and have a look.



Best,

Leanne