My May in Fabric

I have been on a mission of late!   To finish all my UFOs and in March and April I managed to finish four quilts in each month!  I was happy with that.  I was well on my way to achieving my goal!

But this month I have beaten even this target!

Fifth month of the year and five finishes to share with you this fine Fresh Sewing Day!

This one is Moving Mountains, made from a Bonnie Hunter tutorial and has ammonite inspired quilting.  The backing is one of my favourite prints Mystic Traveller

Meet Konaville, my Kona colour chart of schoolhouse blocks. All the background fabrics are school subject based - my favourite being the chemistry lab!  The backing is Just My Type Letterpress.

This quilt is my so far favourite quilt - I love the complexity of all the blocks in the background and the large blocks edged in a mini sashing.  Put your blocks on point and it always looks so much more complicated.  The edges are finished with strip pieced setting triangles and the quilt is backed in Happy Vintage White Circles. Quilted simply in the ditch because I reckoned it didn't need anything more!   

The blocks are propeller blocks as background and the large 12" blocks are taken from books by Jan Halgrimson - now out of print but great resources for something a bit different if you can cope with templates and minimal or no instructions.  I sort of like puzzling it out myself!

The next quilt is a bee quilt made with the help of my Modern Stitches bee.  This is my first attempt at trapunto - I added an extra layer of wadding behind my stars and lightly quilted those and did cosmic quilting in the background.  The backing I used on this quilt is an Echino linen/cotton mix and one that picks up the colours in my top.  I used my #Aurifil 28 in lots of colours to match the stars and different greys in the background and had invisible thread in the bobbin.

Really pleased with how it turned out both front and back!

  

And here is my fifth finish...another bee quilt.  My bee mates in the Star of Africa bee excelled themselves in making their blocks for me - based on a book character from their country.  I set them using Ayumi's Books for Baby pattern from her book Patchwork Please!  This gives my books a bit of a 3D feel and the background relates in some way to the books as if something has escaped ....!  Maybe I've channeled Cornelia Funke's Inkheart too much here!?

  
I really love all the different personalities of block and maker that I see in this small quilt.  My block is Long John Silver representing Scotland of course.  I added a few more books with reading related quotes inked on them as titles: 

A child who reads grows up to be an adult who thinks! (Helen gave me this one but doesn't claim to be the originator)
Reading gives us somewhere to go when we have to stay where we are (Mason Cooley)
To learn to read is to light a fire (Victor Hugo)
There is no friend as loyal as a book ( E Hemmingway)


For backing I didn't have any piece of fabric set aside so decided to piece a back and then to embellish it with machine appliqued letters: 

read lots read more! 

Okay less eloquent than the others but you get my meaning and you can quote me on that!

Enjoy visiting a few new blogs and a few familiar ones and I hope you find time for a bit of stitching too!