Paris Poodle

This week was busy with illustration work but I did manage to do a last minute entry to the Spoonflower contest with the topic "bicycles". It's called Paris Poodle, a poodle bringing home her baguette. One time, I did actually see someone bicycling home in Paris with a baguette sticking out of their basket, but it wasn't a poodle. I have to be honest. You can vote for Spoonflower bicycle fabrics here.

Last week's contest had the topic "jellyfish". I didn't think that topic would inspire me, but sometimes you can be surprised at what you'll come up with in these situations. It turns out jellyfish are kind of a popular motif right now, I didn't know that. I'm still loving mustard, so that's the colour scheme I chose for my jellyfish design (Jellyfish Drift), but I'm finding I've also veered into loving yellow too. Especially with white and grey. In the case of Paris Poodle I think yellow works because it's a more whimsical design.

I've ordered samples of both so I can put them up for sale when the swatches arrive. There are lots of new fabrics in my Spoonflower shop now, including the Yellow Rose print I've shown previously, and a blue and white version of the Art Deco Parrot fabric, my current favourite. I ordered a yard of the cotton linen to make cushions so I'll show you those in another post.

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Yellow log cabin quilt

I've been wanting to make a yellow quilt forever. So just in time for the rainy days we've been having, I've finally gathered up the yellow prints I had on hand. I've never sewn a log cabin quilt square before, but I've read online that it's addictive. Now that I've made my first one I can confirm that it's true! I decided to do my cutting freehand, just making strips as I went along and not worrying about having them all be the same width.

I like the result. At the end I will true up each square using a cardboard template and then when I join all the squares my quilt won't be too wonky! At the end when I have a stack of squares I can arrange them before joining them together and make sure the quilt is balanced. I'm not sure yet whether I'll add sashing (extra strips between the squares).

As usual I have hoarded tiny scraps of my favourite prints, so it's been very nice to finally be able to use even the smallest pieces. Things have been busy lately so this quilt could go very slowly, but I've decided I'd rather just do a square at a time, and not cut it all out beforehand, and maybe even not do any chain piecing. I've found it very relaxing to just choose and cut a piece at a time and put it all together.

This square went together very quickly so I think you could whip up a quilt top this way in no time. For the quilt back I think I'll just keep an eye out for a vintage sheet with some yellow. My quilt is going to be so cheerful!

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