Quilt

Star patterns in my Shop

I will start with a little background story to this quilt. A few years ago while I was volunteering at a shelter, Mr. Montague Wilberforce joined our little band. At the time he was a sick, stressed-out, untrusting, biting middle-aged man. However, over months of care and a lot of patience, he became a healthy, relaxed and loving gentleman who now purrs all the time. He also likes nothing better than to spend a lot of his day with me.

Except, there is the little factor of a gigantic Maine Coon boy named Mr. Tuffleberry who has been spending his days with me while I work since he was a tiny little kitten. He does not like to share his bed. So Mr. Montague comes by now and then in between his romps around the house to cuddle and sleep on my lap for a while. Since he loves to be very close to his humans without being on the lap the whole time, he spends the rest of the day with my husband in the next room while he works.

I really love quilting for my kitties. I made the 2014 Pantone Challenge quilt for Mr. Tuffleberry while he was recovering from a surgery. Now it was time to make a personal quilt for Mr. Montague as well.

My knitting stars quilt patterns – Aran, Argyle, Vale and Fair Isle

Star patterns in my Shop

I had made these vintage-themed star quilt blocks last year. Having read up on the history of British knitting, I based these patterns on traditional knitting designs. I made the Argyle and Vale stars first from a set of Grandma’s House fat quarters, and then a mistake led me to making the Fair Isle Star and the Aran Star with different background colours. I found a perfect Fleur-de-lis grey-cream fabric for the sashing, and I used it for the backing too. Originally I wanted to hand quilt this, but I am a very slow hand quilter and it would have taken forever. At the end I decided to machine quilt it with a crisscross diagonal quilting pattern using a green variegated thread and bound the quilt with Kona Chocolate.

Now my beautiful blue-eyed boy Monty has a quilt made specially for him that he lounges on and I can chalk up another finish.

-Soma

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Castles Quilt Pattern

Purchase Castles Pattern Set

A couple of years ago, Ruth invited me to a wonky house swap on Flickr. I was at a loss what to make because Ruth, Sil and Sandy are expert wonky house designers. After a short while of thinking over many ideas, I decided to make 12 castles. I have loved castles since I was a little child, reading about the brave men and women defending the stronghold. I have quite often arranged our travel plans around cities with castles in them. So it was an easy choice for me and my swap-mates loved the idea. Along with the 4″ blocks that I made for them, I also made these 10″ blocks.

Castle Quilt Pattern

I found these three fabrics of different colours with foliage prints on them. I used the same white for the sashing and the binding, and other two for the two borders. I was reading a short story at the time which may have influenced my choice of putting foliage around the castles.

I quilted the main part with a yellow variegated thread and the outer border with a teal variegated thread. I didn’t want to add extra colour to the inner border, so I used a white thread for that one.

Castles Quilt Pattern

back of the quilt

Last weekend we drove up Napa Valley to the Culinary Institute Of America. The college is in a magnificent stone building surrounded by lichen and moss-covered stone walls. I knew I had to take my castle quilt there for a photo since the day I first clapped eyes on it.

Purchase Castles Pattern Set

Once we found a quiet spot my poor husband crouched down behind the quilt while holding it up for me. I took at least 10-12 shots with a manual focus lens (a lengthy process) before I decided I didn’t like any of them. So he found a way to anchor the quilt on the wall. Although I said I didn’t like the photo, I decided to show the photo anyway!

Pink Magnolia

The campus of the Culinary Institue of America has many magnolia trees and all of them were in full bloom. We walked around the campus for a little while, admiring these gorgeous flowers before driving to Calistoga, the neighbouring city nearby, for some pastry and coffee. It was a perfect day!

Links to individual castle quilt patterns –

January

February

March

June