the bloomsbury gardens hourglass quilt

Oh hi! Yep, I'm still here. And if you're still coming despite my lags between posts, thank you. I've been sewing just a little bit every day, but between a very active toddler and a pre-schooler who isn't wanting to nap these days, time is precious. So I get a little lazy with the blogging and do most of my daily WIP sharing on Instagram. 

I have been feeling quite productive the last few weeks and now I have a new, shiny quilt to show you! When Liberty of London released their first-ever quilting cotton line, Bloomsbury Gardens, it was love at first sight. I've been a Liberty fan for awhile now so this was just a dream come true for me. I ordered a gigantic half yard bundle of the stuff, and while it was a true splurge, I'm still glad I did because these prints feel right at home in my stash and lots of patchwork projects. I haven't been feeling much of an urge to stitch up 'one designer line' quilts lately, but I had to make an exception here. 

The colors and prints in this line are so vibrant and beautiful I knew I wanted to set them off with pure Kona white for a more classic touch. The block I used, though sometimes looks like a pinwheel, is just a simple hourglass. You can find a great tutorial for the block on Ayumi Mills blog. This quilt is pretty big, I think around 75x75, and the blocks are just 4.5 inches, so it was a lot of piecework. Chain-piecing was my friend here.

I quilted this one on my own and I must say I think I'm more proud of this work than any quilting I've done yet to date. Once again I used a design from Angela Walters Free Motion Quilting - I've been getting a lot of bang for my buck with that book! This time I used the Paisley design. Luckily it was fun  to do because it did take me nearly six hours to complete over the course of a week. I went with good old plain white for the back too, and I'm glad I did because the quilting pops.

So that's that. I'll see you here again soonish with my Marcelle Medallion!