A present for you

I'm so sorry for the long silence but life is still busy. My Mom is recovering from her broken elbow but it will still be several weeks before she is out of the cast. Fortunately it is the time of year when people visit so there has been plenty of company (and baked goodies) to fill her days!

I've been working on my 2016 quilt along project and a number of other projects. One of them is an English paper pieced Ottoman pincushion pattern. As a thank you to all of you lovely readers I am making this pattern available to you free-of-charge until January.

I used a variety of fabrics to make these pincushions. The pink and gold one on the left is made with scraps of Dupioni silk! How luxurious is that?

I also used scraps of upholstery fabric to make a couple of the pincushions. I was given small squares from designer fabric sample books  and I used them to make these two.

Want a closer look? Is this cute or what?

I also love the warm colours of this one. The fabric I used for the to is a heavy upholstery fabric but it was perfect for the Ottoman and oh so pretty!

You can get your copy of the pattern in my Craftsy Store. To go directly to the pattern click here.

I hope to get back to posting on a regular basis in the very near future. Wishing you all a very happy, healthy holiday season. Until I post again, happy sewing!
Karen H

My patterns, a reader question and time for a new quilt

I've opened a Craftsy store called Faeries and Fibres and there is a button on my sidebar that will take you directly to Craftsy. I'll  add my free patterns to the Craftsy store. The links that are already in my blog will remain but moving forward I'll post my patterns on Craftsy. If you have trouble accessing them drop me a line and I'll see what I can do to help you out!

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In the last post I wrote about some pincushions and I had a link to my Tiny World Pincushion Gallery. 

Silvana asked "Sono tutti una meraviglia, e il modello è sempre lo stesso?" which I understand to mean "are they all made from the same pattern" or something to that effect. Silvana is a no reply blogger so I was unable to email her my answer which is that I use Mimi Kirchner's pattern to get started and then I make little changes to make the worlds different. I made my own patterns for the trees and some of the houses. Thanks to Google translator I believe the Italian answer is "Io uso modello di Mimi Kirchner per iniziare e poi faccio piccoli cambiamenti per renderle diverse . Ho fatto i miei modelli per gli alberi e alcune delle case".

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I had previously mentioned that I was getting ready to start a new quilt so today I thought I would give you a hint of what I have planned. The whole design isn't worked out but I've got some ideas sorted. I also thought this would be a good opportunity to answer a question I received about how I design a quilt.

When I start a new quilt I look for inspiration. Sometimes it comes from a combination of colours I see or architecture. Old quilts are a great source of design and colour inspiration. Other times the fabric in my stash inspires me. It is the later that is my inspiration for my next quilt.

I have mentioned in the past that I am a non-denominational quilt maker which means I'll use any technique that works for me and I'll use the fabric that meets my needs. This sometimes means that I shop in the home dec department of fabric stores. They sell 100% cotton so why not? Well I found a great bolt of decorator fabric. It had a grey background with large mandalas (they are about 19" across) in yellow, gold and cream so I bought a piece of it!

I loved the print and thought it would make a fabulous centre medallion in a quilt. The grey reminds me of stone, the yellow of honey and the cream of Cornish clotted cream. All of these things spoke to me of my Cornish heritage and I knew that I wanted to make a quilt in which it would be reflected.

I also want to incorporate other aspects of my life and my family. As a child I remember chewing on chunks of honeycomb given to me by my grandmother; it was such a sweet, golden treat and when the honey was sucked from the comb we would delight in chewing on the wax!  I wonder if the honeycomb was the beginning of my romance with hexagons! Coincidentally it was that Grandmother that showed me how to make hexagons over a cardboard template.

My Mom has a love of bees and she often incorporates them in her quilts. She loves her garden and bees are critical to the success of every garden. They are also helpful when making a quilt . Mom was making a quilt that she calls Afrika and there were places where the seams didn't line up. What to do? Cover them with bees, killer bees! You can see and read about her quilt here. My new quilt will provide the perfect opportunity to incorporate bees for my Mom!

All of these elements are my inspiration and they will fire my creativity. So the plan is to design and make a quilt that I will call The Meadery. Mead is a beverage made of fermented honey and it is tasty! Have any of you watched the series Larkrise to Candleford? One of my favourite characters is Queenie Turrill. She raises bees and is renowned for the mead that she makes from their honey! A meadery is the place where mead is made and it is also a type of restaurant common in Cornwall, England.

I am going to need hexagons for this quilt and they will form the honeycomb. I'll use a variety of honey colours from the palest yellow to the richest golden orange. Many years ago I made a small quilt for my Mom. I called it Quilting Bees. I plan on making the honeycomb so that it resembles the honeycomb in this quilt.

Quilting Bees by Karen H 12 1/2" square

Close-up of Quilting Bees by Karen H

Step one is to cut oodles of strips of honey fabric. I'm planning on using 3/4" hexagons for the honeycomb so I'm using 2" strips. I'll also go through my bin of leftover hexagons that have basted and I'll add them to the pile of hexagons I'm going to need. I'll use my rapid cutting technique for cutting my hexagons from these strips so that I can get sewing as quickly as possible!

So listen people: I've decided that it is time to take a bit of a blog vacation or a blogcation as I like to call it!

I'll be off for the next couple of weeks but will be checking and replying to all emails and comments. If you leave a comment and don't hear back from me it means you are a no reply blogger and I have no way to contact you because and email address isn't linked to your profile. 

As always, until I post again happy, happy, happy sewing. I'll be back in a couple of weeks and hopefully at that time will have lots to share with you!

Karen H