My Quilt Stories

Welcome to my Quilt Stories. Some of the quilts I've made and the inspiration, fabrics & techniques behind them

For 63 weeks on a Monday I wrote a Quilt Story, I went through all the quilts we use and have laying around, and also the ones in the teaching cupboard.

If I went into the loft and hunted I would, I am sure, find my very first quilt, old Christmas ones and possibly a few others tucked away in boxes!!! But I have decided that they can stay hidden away in the loft for the time being.

Any new Quilt Stories will be written when I finish the quilts.

These are the latest ones, but stories from 2021 & 2022 are available

Merry Little Christmas Quilt (2025)

11-12-2025

Made using Tilda Merry Little Christmas
Finished 2nd December 2025
Finished size 63” square.

From about 2013 for a few years I bought a lot of Tilda fabric, I loved the patterns, the florals and colours. Some got made up into quilts at the time, but others ended up in a big box to be admired. In the last few years, I have been trying to use up fabric ranges including the Tilda, but other than a pack of fat quarters of the Creating Memories – winter Red & Green fabric that I bought with some Christmas money last year, I haven’t bought any Tilda fabric for ages. I have liked some ranges, but I haven’t loved them enough to buy!!!

Then in September, emails from companies began to pop into my inbox full of the new Tilda range, Merry Little Christmas, I loved it, it reminded me of the range Sweet Christmas from 2013. The colours were different, the Sweet Christmas is reds, pinks and soft warm grey. I made a quilt with it, which was finished in 2016, that Laura immediately said was hers and it has lived on the back of her sofa ever since, till now!!!

I kept looking at the Merry Little Christmas, I showed Laura and Tony caught me looking at it on my laptop a few times, but I wasn’t going to buy it. I really don’t need anymore fabric, even as lovely at it was.

On 11th September a parcel arrived from Lady Sew & Sew, Tony had bought me a present - 32 fat quarters of the whole Merry Little Christmas range…a lovely present, I admired them and laid them out in colour order and kept looking at them.

I knew that I wanted to make a quilt for this Christmas with some of the fabric, it would need to be a quick simple machine pieced design. After a bit of thinking I decided to go with the Faded Glory Pattern.

I had designed the Faded Glory Pattern to work with fat quarters of fabric, to create an easy to machine piece block that the only seams you have to match are the centre ones. Each block has nine pieces in it. The pattern was designed for the fabric range Faded Glory hence the pattern name and the original quilt had sixteen of the blocks in it. The second time I used the pattern was for the quilt I made Laura in 2022 using the Lewis & Irene range Bookworm, with this quilt I made just nine squares for the centre and then added borders to make the quilt around the 65” square size.

It was the right pattern I thought for the fabric, and for me to make in the time. First job, after washing and pressing all the fabric was to cut all 144 pieces out that I needed. In the range was a couple of features fabrics – Winter Friends which is in clay and Duck egg, this has lots of characters on it and the second fabric was the Paper scenes, both of these I would use for the bigger squares. Both of these fabrics I could have fussy cut to make certain bits of the pattern central to the squares, but if I did this, I would waste a lot of fabric. I decided not to fussy cut and see what happened. When I looked at the fabric, almost all of them where directional and so I needed to work out how I was going to cut all the pieces to work within the design, it took me a good two hours to cut them all out, the right way and size. I still have about half of the fabric over for another project.

I then made sixteen piles of pieces, one for each square.

I stitched all the blocks together, a few at a time and showing construction in both my class and also on a YouTube video. By the 19th October they were all made.

Next step was layering with wadding and backing. In my big box of Tilda fabric was three pieces, a metre of each from two ranges in 2014, they were the same design but in different colour ways, green with cream, cream with blue and blue with cream, a design with deer and other woodland creatures, very directional. I hadn’t ever found a design they would work in, but they would work really well for the back of this quilt.

Deciding on the machine quilting took a time, I had thought about doing something traditional like a feather design, then cross hatching, I also looked at a continuous line poinsettia design, all would have worked but didn’t feel right. I wanted the fabric to be the main focus not the quilting. I kept coming back to the fabric called Holly, which was in each of the colourways, holly leaves on a scrolling, curving line. Holly leaves are one of my ‘go to’ Christmas designs, I have used them so much. It felt right to go with the holly leaf. I drew up one, in the size I thought, and laid it on, it worked, so I cut out another six, each square has seven leaves quilted onto it with connecting lines and scrolls. I wrote a Ramble on how I quilted it, and how to describe it – sort of quilting with a walking foot in a sort of free motion, improv way!!! I used standard natural Gutermann cotton in the bobbin and a variegated green Gutermann Cotton 30 for the top.

Once all sixteen squares were quilted it was time to join them together. When we had had a few days away in early October in Devon, we had gone to Serendipity fabric shop in Bovey Tracey and I had bought 1m of Eve fabric from the range in pine, petrol and burgundy (and some fat quarters for land and seascape postcards!). One reason I got it was for joining strips and also, I really loved the design, it is a versatile blender.

I went with the burgundy Eve for this quilt, it pulled out the red tones and made the design feel richer, darker and more Christmassy, I also used it for the edge binding.
I used a plain cream for the back joining strips, to work in with the fabrics, I didn’t worry where the three fabrics would be on the back and its totally random, with a whole line of the blue with cream, but it doesn’t at all matter.

When I had finished the quilt, we wanted to do a reveal for YouTube, Laura had suggested it, but the British weather was against us, and we had had nothing but rain on our one free day we needed to do it. We braved the weather, donned our waterproofs and went out in the garden and Laura (as she is way taller than me!!!) held and dropped the bottom of the quilt!!! The quilt only got a little bit damp! And after it had dried out, I took the Sweet Christmas hexagon quilt off the back of the sofa and replaced it with this one.

I don’t think it will stay on there all year like the Sweet Christmas one did, that has gone up into Laura’s bedroom, but it will stay there till end of March and return in September.

As for the rest of the fabric, well I am thinking about what I want to create with it, maybe something along the lines of the Sweet Christmas with hexagons, a slow quilt project but that is a project for another day, probably later in 2026.

Bright & Bold Stitch n’ flip Sampler Quilt (2025)

16-03-2025

Finished size 58” square. Finished 10th March 2025

This quilt has been made over the term at class, I wanted to show how you can do Stitch n’ flip quilt-as-you-go quick make on the sewing machine quilt. There are lots of designs that work to this method and so instead of just making one, I went with a Sampler quilt showing six different ones.

Each week I would take in a design and then demonstrate how that design was machine stitched. Using this method, you stitch the design onto a prepared backing and wadding square. Each bit is stitched and then flipped or opened up and pressed before the next piece of fabric is added, building up the design till completed and then trimmed to size – 14½” in the case of my squares. That meant that in each class I would have a second completed – stitched & quilted, done!!!

This type of patchwork is ideal for using Jelly Rolls – 2½” wide strips of fabric, I had a small set of bright & bold Kaffe Fassett fabric, which wouldn’t be enough, so I added in from my stash a few plainer fabrics, the bright pink stars, the bright green, two in the purple family and the rust one to make it enough. I have in the past also used this method to make a quilt from all the leftover strips from borders, bindings and joining pieces, all the strips where different widths and it was a great scrappy quilt, harmonised by soft natural calico.

The six designs I used were – straight pieced squares of which I made four. Diagonal pieced, I made two and they are on the corners, I think this was the favourite of the class, as it was the one that many of them made into all different things – quilt squares, squares for bags, back of a project pouch, table mat…. Half and Half square and also the combination square, each of these I made two and then I made four Log cabins squares that are in the centre. And the final two squares are back to the straight piecing but using up all the leftover small pieces joined together in a long randomly pieced strip first, then stitched onto to make the square.

That made sixteen squares. I was in two minds as I was making the squares which fabric I would use to join them, it was either the purple or green from my stash – as these were the only ones that I had enough of. I arranged the squares on our bed with both fabrics between to see which I preferred. Both worked, but the green ‘shouted’ and seemed to make the whole quilt even bolder. The purple pulled it all together and harmonised & calmed it.

Once I had it all together, I wondered about using the green for the edge binding, but it felt too strong, and it clashed with the fabric I had used on the back!!! The backing fabric was a set of fat quarters that I had got years ago in Aldi, I had used some of it for other projects, but I still had enough for the backing squares and some left over.

This quilt is very Bright & Bold….. and has been added to the pile that go on our bed as Tony really likes it!!!

Tilda Charm Pack Quilt (2025)

22-02-2025

Finished size 54" x 64". Finished 14th February 2025

This quilt is one of my many U.F.O’s (Un Finished Objects!) and I have a large number of them! From quilts to embroideries and dressmaking projects. It is part of my plan to work on U.F.O’s in 2025 and this quilt was the first one that I picked up to finish.

It was started in January 2024, I was going through pre-cut fabric packs with the class and really concentrating on Charm Packs – 5” squares, I ‘created’ lots of quilts in the digital quilt world using EQ8 to show the many ways that a Charm Pack could be used in quilt making.

Part of the reason behind creating the digital quilts was that I have lots of Charm Packs that I have bought over the years, especially Tilda ones, but also a few Moda ones and I really felt that I should think about using them up, another of those pie in the sky wishes!!!

This was the first quilt to use a charm pack and the only one at the moment!!! The Charm Pack I chose was Tilda Cotton Beach from Summer 2022 collection. I chose the pattern of putting two squares together and then adding the borders in a mini leaf white on white from Makower on either side, to form a square. The squares are stitched alternate ways to create the pattern.

Putting the squares together and making the centre was very quick, its an easy pattern to make. I layered the front with my usual cotton wadding and a backing fabric (I will come back to the back in a while!!!). Then machine quilted it, with circles, using plates as templates. Many of the fabrics have circles or a circular feel and I thought circles would work with the ‘feel’ of the whole thing. That was all done about a year ago February 2024, as the photos came up on my photo feed this week!!!

The finished piece wasn’t very big, just 36” x 44”, one charm pack of 40 squares doesn’t go very far, even with extra fabric. This is fine for a cot quilt but not very useable for an adult’s quilt. That’s why I had always planned to add borders. But I moved onto the next teaching piece, folded up the centre in a project bag with all the fabrics and left it, meaning to come back to it.

But it sat there for the rest of 2024.

When I picked up the project bag and emptied the contents onto our bed, I found the rectangle centre and all the border fabric cut and the backing fabric ready, which was a very nice surprise as I hadn’t thought I had got that far.

Over January and early February I have been putting a border together – marking the design – circles on a straight line, layering and then machine quilting in a variegated blue (Gutermann Sulky 30) for the front and a variegated purple (Standard Gutermann Sewing cotton) for the back. I completed each border and then stitched it to the centre, one at a time, until all four were on and then I finally stitched on the binding. And first quilt of 2025 and of the U.F.O’s done!!!

One last thing to tell you about the back of the quilt, in my tidying up at the end of 2023 I had found a bag with 20 squares, a Charm pack, of Kaffe Fassett fabrics in greens. Some had been joined together in pairs others in fours, and there were a few still as individual squares. I remembered using them as demonstration pieces for chain piecing and locking seams. But they weren’t enough to do anything with really. I decided I would use them for the back of the quilt, stitched together very randomly with white calico offcuts. They made the back of the centre but what about the borders? I went through my green fabric drawer and pulled out a lot of the bright greens (that wouldn’t get used in landscapes!!!) and cut them into rectangles of the width of the border and random lengths and then stitched them together into big, long lengths, enough for all four borders!!! They are bright!!! But it used up a lot of fabric and makes for an interesting back to the quilt.

On to the next U.F.O!!!!

Floral Sampler Topper Quilt (2024)

17-08-2024

Finished size 68" square.

There are lots of reasons I make quilts, because I love the fabrics and want to use them, as presents and then to teach. This quilt falls into the last catalogue – teaching.
The afternoon class, which was new from September 2023, had got to a stage that they were ready and wanted to move on to making a quilt, we were heading into the last term before the summer holidays. In the past I have taught a very traditional sampler quilt – very much in the style of the quilts in the Lynne Edwards Sampler quilt book. This was the style that I was first taught and I have carried on using, as it’s a great way of building skills, a block at a time. But it has been some time since I have taught a Sampler quilt, as I haven’t had the need and really for a quilt like that it is best to start at the very beginning of the teaching year and have 30 weeks (that’s if everyone comes to the three terms). These type of sampler quilts are usually big quilts, and take up a lot of time and commitment plus are expensive to make. Patchwork Quilting isn’t a cheap hobby, especially if you are buying lots of new fabrics.

Other than time, the other reason I didn’t want to teach the traditional sampler style quilt was that it didn’t suit the ladies I was teaching, one had already been working through Lynne Edwards Book. It didn’t feel like the right quilt to make.

I have a big back catalogue of work, files and files of patterns and quilts I have designed, I don’t very often go back and re-use patterns, I tend to end up designing new things!!! But I really should go back and use older designs, and that is what I did with this the Floral Sampler Topper Quilt.

One of my favourite quilts is the Floral Quilt one, I made it and taught it back in 2013, the design was also published in Popular Patchwork. This quilt sits in the pile in our bedroom and in winter is used on the bed or thrown over my dressing table chair, I just love the colours and design and so I decided to use this quilt as the basis of the Floral Sampler Topper Quilt. If you scroll down, somewhere amongst these Quilt Stores will be the Floral Quilt.

By using The Floral Quilt as the starting point, the classes, it was originally just for the afternoon, but as soon as the morning saw what I was making with the afternoon, a number of them wanted the pattern!!! The Floral quilt has sixteen squares and as I gave them all sixteen designs they were able to make different choices of which four squares they wished to use for the centre. Everyone went slightly different and everyone chose totally different colours, so eventually all the quilts will very different. Also they can if they want make the full sixteen squares quilt, at a later date.

In keeping with my current policy I wanted to use fabrics from my stash, I am trying only to buy the very basics, like the tone on tone whites that I use for the background fabrics, or the odd blender or plain to pull a group of fabrics together. The first fabric I chose was the small blue floral, this is a Sevenberry fabric that I have had for years (ahhh 10 years possibly!!!) I had it in three colourways, this blue/green, a pink/lilac that I made a shirt/tunic from and also a pale pink/bright pink version. I didn’t have a lot of the Sevenberry floral fabric, lots of pieces and I really hoped it would be enough, with a lot of careful cutting and piecing it was – just!!! Once I had chosen the first fabric I then pulled out two blues, two pinks, two lemons and a green to go with it plus a tone on tone white dot for the background.

I chose my four squares for the centre, and showed how to create using fusible web and machine applique, using different stitches to cover the different ones others sewing machines do. Next was to layer and quilt and again in line with my policy of using up what I have, I found six squares I had used in a demonstration of simple Bargello patchwork back in 2019, and cut and stitched them about to make the four squares for the backing of the centre squares.

I kept the quilting simple, using the walking foot I went round the centres of the flowers and then shadow quilted round the outside of the design. I then marked leaves and curving stems on the borders and quilted these. I then demonstrated putting the four finished centre squares together.

I had no real plan for the borders when I started out, and talking through with the class, everyone had their own ideas of what they would like to do. I love this when they have their own ideas and really personalise the quilts they are making, it is exciting seeing their skills grow and them enjoying their creative quilt journey.

In the end I went with a flower appliqued in a centre square with plain blue borders then strips coming off and a further pieced border at the top and bottom. Then for the corners I drew up a new design using the flowers and leaves from the design.

At the end of term, I had the centre four squares all together and two borders pieced and the two corners also pieced, but it was nowhere near finished. I think I gave everyone the tools to get on with their quilts over the summer holiday and I did say to them message me if you need help or advise.

Then I went on holiday and came home and sorted out our house and garden and my father-in-law’s. And then finally sat down and worked on finishing the quilt. I started with piecing and appliqueing all the borders and corners. I then needed the backing fabric and spent a fair bit of time, cutting and piecing together the off cuts of blue range of fabrics from dressmaking projects – all cottons and mostly Rose & Hubble fabrics used to make summer dresses for Laura and I. Yes, it takes a lot of time to use up fabric but it really is very satisfying to clear even a small amount of offcuts/stash!!! Plus I feel that it takes me back to the roots of rural English patchwork in the late 1800’s and into the 1900’s, waste nothing, make do and mend.

Once all the backing fabric was made, it was a case of layering all eight pieces of the border and corners. I then spent a few days machine quilting them – in the same manner as the four centre squares, with shadow quilting round the applique flowers and then quilting in leaves and curving stems. Once they were all completed, it was time to put the borders to the centre, first two sides, then joining the corners to the other two border and joining these to the centre.

I then looked at the fabric I had left, just a few small scraps of the Sevenberry floral and not a lot of anything except for the darker of the two plain blues, enough to use for the edge binding, and it would work on the front, framing the quilt and it would also work with the blues used on the back. Once the binding was on, all that was left was to wash off the water erasable pen marks where I had drawn on to quilt and also quilt in my tortoise logo, initials and year of making. Another quilt finished.

Evie's Quilt (2022)

07-01-2023

Finished size 64" square.

When my younger Sister Jenny had her first child, Anastasia, I embroidered a Birth Sampler & made a cot quilt, then a single bed size quilt for her 'big' bed and then the year she went up to Senior school for her Christmas present she got a new adult quilt. I did the same for her second child, Natalie and then along came the Twins, Evie & Toby and I did the same thing, this Christmas they got new quilts each as they have gone up to senior school!

This is Evie's Quilt.

I usually make a bed size quilt to fit their beds, taking into consideration that they have head and foot boards on their beds, but this time I decided to go with my favourite shape and size - 64" square, what I call a topper quilt. I knew this would work on their present single beds but if they changed the size, went up to a double - it would still work and it also works as a lovely size to just wrap round yourself to snuggle.

Kelly-Jane from my class came in with a lovely small heart piece that she had made and I decided it would make, enlarged, a great centre to Evie's quilt. I also need to go through how to make HST & piecing and so started the heart and used the pieces as demonstration pieces in class.

Once the heart was altogether, I layered it with wadding & the backing fabric and decided to machine quilt all over with a flower pattern. I enlarged the flower from a quilting book and cut it out and used it as a template, laying it on top of the heart square, and drawing around it, filling in the details, I drew all the flowers on and then added the connecting lines and leaves free hand. Then machine quilted the design using my walking foot.

The four borders, two shorter, two longer were made with log cabin style design, from both coloured and white on white essential fabric. The flowers were cut using Accuquilt cutter and die, I already had a few cut, left over from another quilt, so I cut a few more.

I machine quilted the borders and then put all the pieces together using the quilt-as-you-go construction method. Before binding the edges and giving the quilt to Evie for Christmas.

Toby's Quilt (2022)

07-01-2023

Finished size 64" square.

This is the quilt I gave Toby for Christmas.

The thing with the twins - Toby and Eve, I have always created their quilts so that they link visually with each other, and yes I have always gone with blue/greys for Toby and pinks/purples for Evie.

For their cot quilts I went with the Soft Toy design, for both of them. Then their first single bed quilt both were stars, at the time they were still in the same bedroom so having the same design in different colours felt right.

This time, I have linked their quilts in the overall design, a centre square and then similar design borders with the log cabin type design.
The centre of Toby's quilt is made up of nine star designs, harking back to his previous quilt, this time the blues are much deeper and stronger in colour, but there are a few fabrics used in both quilts. The stars are a combination of both pieced and foundation pieced - one of which, caused me loads of problems!!! In theory it was a really straight forward design made up of three pieces of foundation piecing joined together and yet I was having one of those days that I just couldn't do foundation piecing, I got it wrong so many times!!! I kept unpicking and trying again!!! But I got there in the end.

Once the centre was together, I layered and quilted it. I made templates of different stars, including a couple in the top and randomly laid them on, drew them round them and machine quilted.

The borders have stars cut using Accuquilt and die, in the centre of a Log cabin style square. The whole quilt was made using the quilt-as-you-go method.

Oh, I should also say another way I linked Toby and Evie's quilts was by using Makower Essential white on white stars fabric, all the white on Toby's Quilt was it and then I used it, mixed with other Essentials in Evie's. Just because they have new quilts for their beds doesn't mean they don't have to use their old ones, they have the choice!!!