Around the world blog hop

It's Design Wall Monday and my turn on the Around the World Blog Hop.  The blog hop is pretty much a big game of tag ping ponging around the world between quilt bloggers.  I was tagged by Marly from the Netherlands last week to answer a few questions and in turn tag some other bloggers that I follow that make really lovely stuff and I think you would like.

So I'm tagging Tomomi who blogs at Slaney Handcraft and has the most beautiful quilting and fun art quilts on her blog.  I haven't met Tomomi yet in real life but I've seen her work on display!  Hopefully I'll put that right when the Modern Irish Quilters meet up this Autumn.

I'm also tagging Yvonne from Quilting Jet Girl, who I met on the Plum & June Let's Acquainted Blog Hop.  I love Yvonne's exploration of free motion quilting especially quilting in rocket ships here and there on her space quilt.  Please go have a look, it is really fun!

My third person I'm tagging is Kerry from Penny Dog Patchwork.  Kerry is a fellow dog lover, writes patterns for the UK quilt magazines and enters quilt shows. She was picked for Sewvivor and is working on her nautical themed project this week!  I love the work all three share and I'm sure you will too!

What am I working on?
Above photo is the design wall today.  Yes I finally have a proper design wall!  My uncle Tony saw my collapsible flannel sheet strung between a bookcase and a mirror and decided we could do better than than that and made me a 7ft x 4ft wall.  No, I can't reach the top but I do have a step ladder (those that know me, know I'm a shorty at 5ft tall!)

This weekend, Gordon helped me cover it with cotton wadding and the first thing that went up was my un-named triangle quilt.  Not sure what to call this one - I'm open to suggestions if anyone has any!

I also finished up the stipple quilting on mum's Table for 2 quilt , here's a little peak of the front of this quilt.  The quilt back is described in this post from last week.  Just binding and labelling to go!  This was 72" x 90" approx and probably the biggest thing I've quilted so far!

How does my work differ from other of its genre?
This is a tough one to answer as I'm not sure I'm any bit different from all of us, who can't imagine not playing with fabric and colour, and making quilts!  I like all sorts of colour except probably browns and I like a variety of projects from traditional piecing to foundation paper piecing.

I learned to quilt watching Craftsy and YouTube and reading blogs, trying out techniques and tutorials that others have freely shared, so I'm usually not afraid to give something a try!  One of my favourite online teachers is Rachel from Stitched in Color and she has a new class coming up this month all about angles, if you want to check out the details here.

I do like to try new things and recently tried my hand at thread painting for a piece for the Irish Patchwork Society for the EQA Garden display at the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham.

Ireland had the winter garden and it took a couple of attempts (4!) to get the Robin the way I wanted him.  (Robins on our side of the Atlantic are round, tubby looking birds that are really fiesty!)

Why do I write/create what I do?
For me quilting is quite different from the day job which is quite left brained, analytical and requires lots of communication.  Quilting allows me to play and zone out, getting lost in shapes and colour and I get a great sense of satisfaction coming up with a design, testing it out, finishing the quilt top, getting it basted, adding the quilting and finally sewing that last stitch in the binding!

I write to share about what I've learned and fun things I've found that may be of interest or solve a problem for someone else making a quilt!  To give back a little bit as I've learned so much from other's online freely sharing their work and experiences.



How does my writing/creating process work?
Sometimes a word pops into my head like Stars or an image like the Robin on a branch above but usually I see something in a book or a magazine that catches my eye and I start playing with shapes and colour.

This 12" block, the London Roads, published in McCalls Quilting, grabbed my attention.  I liked the idea of the arrows but not the colours so I decided to draw it out myself and see what I could come up with.  I usually draw the blocks out with no colour first to see what shapes I can find.

In the end, I thought a warmer brighter feel to this in a large quilt would be fun.  So, I redrafted with a scrappy look and came up with much larger blocks to give a throw sized quilt 70" x 70".

Things often change in practice so yesterday morning I took my design, as many low volume prints for the background and what I could find of pinks and oranges I had on hand and started cutting.

I'm happy with this so far and love having my design wall back to put them up there and stand back and see what works and what doesn't.

 So I think it'll be a busy week cracking on with these two projects.  Linking up to Design Wall Monday and