All of us Down Under are lucky enough to have Carolyn Friedlander visiting Australia at the moment. I have been known to use her fabrics just a tad:
She is one of my favourite fabric designers and I was so happy to snag a spot at one of her workshops a couple of weekends ago.
Carolyn lead us through her Austin House Quilt pattern, which is a very achievable foundation paper pieced pattern.
When I first saw the quilt my eye probably twitched. All those little pieces. FPP. Arrgh!
Carolyn guided the class through the FPP process and it was nowhere near as hard as I was expecting. By the second house I was actually enjoying myself, dang nabbit!
I decided to turn my two houses into mini quilts (for my future mini quilt wall – you know, the one I’ll have when I finally get my own sewing room).
If you’d like to do the same as I’ve done here:
add 1-1/4″ background strips to the top and sides of your house block.
add a 4-1/2″ strip of ground to the bottom of the block.
bind with 2-1/4″ binding strips.
I spray basted these (so easy!) and gave them a quick iron to set the spray. The quilting is straight and dense – it adds some lovely texture to the pieces. I used a hera marker to mark 6-8 lines across the mini quilt and then used my walking foot to line up against them.
I backed my minis with more of Carolyn’s Carkai fabric and enjoyed hand stitching my binding while watching a cinematic, thought-provoking movie Transformers Prime (the 5 yr old got to the remote before me, sigh).
I had a wonderful time at Carolyn’s class and would thoroughly recommend you attend one if you have the chance!
Speaking of Carolyn Friedlander – her new, 6 piece, linen/cotton fabric line called Euclid is gorgeous. My next pattern (sneak peek below) will feature a sample made from Euclid and Essex linen….a winning combo!
The pattern is called Deco Diamonds and I’m working hard to have it out before Christmas. Wish me luck! – and don’t forget to subscribe to be the first to know about it.