Happy New Quilting Year! I hope your Christmas celebrations were everything you hoped for and that you managed to successfully hide from washing up duties and dip into a lovely new book or snuggle up - under a quilt of course - and watch a favourite film (you can't watch Mary Poppins too many times, trust me).
I've been playing with my favourite colouring set again - Tilda Fabric's Creating Memories collection - and I mentioned in my autumn post that they're already helpfully grouped into seasonal palettes, but that doesn't mean we can't mix them up a bit, which is what I intend to do in this occasional series of posts. This time I'm playing with a bright and brilliant mid-winter palette to inspire some new year sewing...
clockwise from the top: Seamstripe teal, Gingham blue, Frida pearl, Polkadot blue, Carla saffron, Seamstripe red, Gingham red, Chambray teal, Carla blue, Gingham yellow, Frida blue, Polkadot red, Carla red
There is a rather long, sad gap between taking down the Christmas quilts and putting out our spring creations. Yes, we can decorate for Valentine's Day - or, even better, for Galentine's, when we can celebrate our wonderful sewing pals - and warm up the house with a welcome shot of red and pink.
But cool, wintery light also suits red's primary companions on the colour wheel, yellow and blue, which is the colour palette I used for my Northern Lights Sampler, so I returned to my Northern Lights Pinterest board for some Scandinavian inspiration...
And, as it's getting hard to find Crystal Manning's delicious Cadence fabric now, it also gave me the perfect opportunity to recolour my Northern Lights quilt...
But if you're not ready to take on a sampler quilt this January (let's be honest, getting out of bed seems like a triumph) then how about a fun and simple quilt to piece from my free pattern library? The gingham in my winter story palette immediately reminded me of Woodruff...
I hand quilted my original Woodruff quilt, which may seem daunting, but I promise that it's easier than you think and winter is the perfect time for some slow stitching (plus you can cover yourself with the quilt as you sew). You can find my simple and achievable hand quilting tips HERE.
This might be the just the sort of gentle new year's resolution you've been looking for, because, quite honestly, January is no time to be giving things up!
with love from the studio,
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