Are you a sewing room traveller? As much as I like to do some real-life travelling, I also love to create a quilty postcard to remind me of happy days sightseeing (or even to travel somewhere new in my imagination). So far I’ve visited London and Amsterdam, gone on a French garden tour and explored a Swedish forest! My latest quilt will take us all on an Alpine adventure: climb aboard the Alpine Express...
Alpine Express, winter version
Alpine Express is a row by row quilt: starting at the bottom of our fictional snowy mountainside we have a pretty Alpine village replete with flower strewn balconies and a chapel with a bell tower (modelled on the tiny chapel at Jenisberg): as we move higher we pass a row of chalets, a row of mountain huts and finally, on the horizon, a little red train making its way over a spectacular railway viaduct.
This Winter version of the quilt draws on my happy memories of a skiing holiday to the Swiss Alps, where we celebrated New Year with a lovely group of friends. And while I'll never be much of a skier - much too timid - I did enjoy exploring the village we stayed in and taking trips on the train up to the glacier for some unearned après-ski.
snapshots from our trip to Wengen
The Swiss railway system is a marvel, its trains run like clockwork - of course they do - and criss-cross the Alps through an extensive network of viaducts and tunnels. One of the best known is the Bernina Express. There's no link to the famous Swiss sewing machines that I know of, although they're both named after a mountain on the Swiss-Italian border.
And for those of you who associate alpine scenery with the Sound of Music - apologies in advance, you'll be humming that all day - let me whisk you away to the Austrian Alps...
Alpine Express, summer version
In this Summer version the snow has melted away to reveal verdant meadows and rich green pine trees. The blocks, chalets and huts are just the same, but they look so different with a change of season and colour palette. And I could just see Heid's grandfather living in one of those mountain huts ;-)
Alpine Express will be available as a Pattern Booklet or as a downloadable PDF - with separate instructions for Summer & Winter versions and a handy customisable chart for you to organise your tree fabrics - and both are due for release on the 15th of July.
Following on from last year's wonderful Vintage Circus collaboration, I'm absolutely delighted that Richla at Got Kwilts will be kitting both versions in Tilda Fabrics scrumptious new range of small-scale prints, Creating Memories (was ever a collection so well named?) and you can find the pre-order listing here.
So whether you're a winter skier or a summer hiker, Alpine Express will whisk you back to the mountains. Happy travels,
Nicola xx.