I like all the projects in Stitched Blooms, of course. But you know, some of them are just my faaaaavourites. ;-) And this is one of those favourites. It’s a baby quilt, but it can also be used as a lap quilt. And believe me, at the moment it is seeing plenty of action like that because we can’t put the radiators on in our house so it’s kinda cold. Brrr.
Anyway, the quilt! It has an acorn and oak leaves motif appliqued on it. It is inspired by a design I once saw in the V&A. But you know what? It’s been so long since I saw it that I can’t even remember if it was a wooden screen or ceramic or a quilt or whatever. What I do remember is that it’s in the Medieval section. Which doesn’t really help a lot.
These are my sketches for the quilt. It had a few different looks as you can see! My original idea was to do the appliqué with felt, but my editor convinced me that fabric would be a better choice. It’s certainly easier to use fusible web with fabric than with felt!
The acorn and oak leaves combination is an old one in design (it must be when they used it in the Middle Ages!) and I wanted to bring it into the 21st century. I hope I have succeeded! So the design is big and bold and kept very simple against a white background.
You must love hand appliqué to make this quilt (or you can cheat and do it by machine!) because there is quite a lot of it here. Or if you like the design but don’t want to do it this big, it can always be re-sized using the CD that comes with the book. And if you re-size it you can totally use it as an embroidery pattern! :-)
One thing I am quite pleased with in my version of the quilt, is designing custom fabric for the binding. It sports the same leaves and acorns as the quilt itself. A small thing that makes me happy whenever I look at it. :-)
Although I am really happy with this quilt I must admit to being quite nervous that proper quilters will laugh at my quilt instructions. Oh well.. ;-)
Visit Mollie over at Wild Olive to see the suuuper cute project she made from Stitched Blooms. It’s so so cute. Aina very kindly reviewed the book on her blog Casa Andersen, as did Amy over at aplcreations.com (there’s a giveaway too, yay!). And on the Sew Mama Sew blog you can download the Mehndi Tea Towel project for free – go check it out!