The garden is wreathed with blossom at the moment. It's such a lovely time of year - I have a May birthday, so I might be a bit biased - and I'd love to capture the freshness of new leaves, delicate blossom and the promise of early summer in a quilt. And then I remembered that I'd designed an alternative colourway of my Spindleberry quilt - called, appropriately enough, Spindleblossom - and thought it would make a good subject for the #colouringquilts series.
Both PDF and Paper Spindleberry Patterns are £5 until the end of May and you can try out colour schemes with a free downloadable colouring sheet here.
I made my original quilt in Ruby by Bonnie & Camille for Moda, but I thought at the time that those big graphic blooms would look wonderful in a two-colour quilt, combining pink and ivory prints with a touch of green: blissfully blossomy.
My quilt block was inspired by the border of an early quilt in the Victoria &Albert Museum's collection and I was reminded to revisit it when researching a recent blog post.
The Bishop's Court Bedcover was created for the Beavis family of Exeter at the turn of the eighteenth century, in a sumptuous collection of silks and velvets - some embroidered with silver-gilt thread - which date back to the previous century.
The original colours look amazingly contemporary and the colour palette reminded me of one of the most inspirational quilters I know on Instagram, Deb McGuire, who makes exquisite re-imaginings of historic quilts with contemporary fabrics.
photo from Deb's Instagram @plainstitchdeb
If your heart is set on summery prints, you could take something from that 300 year-old quilt and combine them with a rich grey background to make them really glow.
Or how about combining grey and pink for sophisticated take on the blossom theme?
Fabric fashions come and go - much like the blossom - but some colour combinations endure.
I hope you're enjoying the blossom and some late spring sunshine where you are,
Nicola xx