07 April, 2014

A New Quilting Project: Sylvia's Bridal Sampler Quilt




My local quilting shop (Kornacraft in Gawler, SA (http://www.kornacraft.com.au/home/) is offering it as a series of classes through 2014 so, as an avid fan of Jennifer Chiaverini’s ‘Elm Creek Quilts’ series of books (https://www.goodreads.com/series/40596-elm-creek-quilts), I decided to bite the bullet and do the Sylvia’s Bridal Sampler Quilt in order to learn foundation piecing.


I do like the blues and pinks of the original version as per the book, but found the overall effect with the creams and tans was a little washed out for my liking.  I had a lot of trouble trying to work out what colour theme I wanted – the batik one from the book really caught my eye, but the blue on blue ones did nothing for me:


In the end I decided to go with mid-range colours (not pastels and not bolds) and have chosen the ‘Under the Australian Sun’ range by Leesa Chandler, in particular the ‘Gum Flower’ design.  Unfortunately this is a discontinued range so I’m having to scrabble to get enough of the colours , but will still have to supplement from other fabric ranges to fill in the gaps


So, since buying the book and sitting in on some classes starting a couple of months ago, I’ve only manage to trace the patterns because I’ve only managed to obtain about ¾ of the fabrics just the other week – hopefully I will actually begin to cut and sew at the next class!

As I progress through all 140 6" blocks that make up the quilt (yes, I know, it's a lot of blocks!) I've decided to do an idea I heard another quilter from the Southern Cross Quilters online quilting group come up with - as I complete each block I will be putting a gold coin into a box so that by the end of it I will have a nice little stash of money toward fabric for another quilt!


                http://southerncrossquilters.blogspot.com.au/