Kantha Quilt

Another finish. Yay! Last year I joined Alison Glass's Kantha Sew Along. I don't often join group sewing events, preferring to go my own way, but I find Kantha quilts quite beautiful and the unfussy hand stitching seemed like something I would enjoy. I am thrilled with the result!

If you aren't familiar with kantha quilts, they are a traditional Indian craft, made with a front and back, but no batting on the inside, held together with simple running stitches.

I pulled a collection of golds, pinks and blues out of my stash and pieced them in random sizes and orientations rather than in the long parallel strips that many other participants used.  I quilted each section in a specific color or pearl cotton with a specific stitch size and arrangement. I also embroidered simple paisley designs using chain stitch on a section of solid blue fabric. I suspect my stitching was more dense than is typical. At least, that's my excuse for it taking me until almost the end of 2023 to finish the 2022 sew along! 

I also pieced the backing, starting with a length of a traditional French fabric that was handed down to me from my husband's stepmother. The variety in stitch colors and styles makes it look like it is made from multiple different fabrics.

I finished the edges in the traditional way, turning the front and back fabrics under and stitching x's to hold them in place.

I am glad to know this technique and expect I will be making more of these in the future. The resulting texture is lovely and the weight really practical for Texas's hot climate. Plus, the hand stitching is easy and fun to do.

Courthouse Steps Log Cabin Quilt

I was about to ship a fairly recently finished quilt to its new owners when I realized that I hadn't taken any photos of it. Now that I've done that, I thought I'd share them.

The quilt is a modern take on the classic "courthouse steps" variation of a log cabin. It has a modern feel to it because each block, at eighteen inches square, is unusually large. It took only twenty blocks to make a full-size quilt!

My fabric choices, a combination of contemporary graphics, batiks, stylized images and low volume backgrounds, further contribute to the modern feel.

I quilted it on an APQS long-arm machine (thanks once again to everyone at Over the Top Quilting for their help), using the block by block feature to ensure the quilt design perfectly aligned with the pieced blocks. The resulting secondary diamond pattern turns out to be more prominent than the original star design. I added circles between the stars to fill in a large open space and to give a little relief from all the straight lines.

I finished it off with a crisp blue on blue striped binding.

I hope this quilt's new owners are as pleased with it as I am! It's making me think it might be time to start yet another log cabin quilt. 

Day trip to Austria's Wachau Valley

I'm still trotting along with my husband to various geological meetings around the world. Most recently he was in Vienna where we had enough time to make a day trip to the Wachau Valley.  A pleasant hour long drive took us to the Melk Abbey, an enormous complex perched on a rocky outcrop above the Danube and the town of Melk. Sadly, photography is not permitted inside the buildings so I cannot show you the impressive library, nor the over-the-top Baroque church interior. 

Here you see the entrance to the complex and the church dome. Though the Benedictine abbey on this site dates back to 1089, the church in its current form was completed in 1736.  

It is a still a working monastery and tours are limited to a number of rooms dedicated to displays about the history and purpose of the abbey, the library, and the church.

You can also wander the extensive grounds and gardens.

The terrace outside the library affords sweeping views of the town of Melk below, the Danube, and the surrounding countryside.

Here is church's front, which shares the same vibrant egg-yolk yellow color as much of the complex and hints at the treasures within.

Because I am a sucker for cobblestones and narrow passageways, here is an image from inside the complex. It is an atmospheric place and you can understand why Umberto Eco drew on this setting for his book "Name of the Rose."

Our next stop was Arstetten Castle, which compared to Melk with its busloads of visitors, is off the beaten path. Arstetten Castle is the present day home of the Hohenberg family, descendants of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the presumptive heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife Sophie, whose assassination in June of 1914 is credited with triggering WWI.

A portion of the house has been turned into a museum with displays on various facets of Franz Ferdinand's life, the Hohenberg family, and details of the assassination, including a reproduction of the open car in which Franz Ferdinand and Sophie were riding when they were shot.

We visited the crypt where Franz Ferdinand and Sophia are interred, and found it remarkably moving and intimate. I chose not to take photos, feeling it would be intrusive and disrespectful in this solemn and personal space. 

We did wander through the grounds, enjoying the fresh air, long views, 

and early spring flowers.

To cap off the day we stopped in Durnstein, a tiny but picturesque and very popular town along the Danube, best known perhaps for King Richard the Lionheart's imprisonment in its hilltop castle in 1192. We sadly didn't have time to climb to the castle, instead satisfying ourselves with a stroll along the main street. 

I often find small details are essential to the character and charm of a place. 

 

Having found eating establishments along the main street to be either too busy or not to our liking, our guide eventually led us down a side street to Alter Klosterkeller, a family owned restaurant that proved to be the perfect choice.

Our table was right next to the just budding out vines leading down to views of the Danube and hills beyond. 

We shared an unhurried and delicious meal of local specialties and crisp, local wines. It was a delightful ending to our day in the Wachau Valley.

I must give credit to the wonderful staff at our travel agency, Travel Abundance, who arranged this perfect day trip (along with the rest of our adventures). They built an itinerary tailored to our interests and ensured that it was totally stress free.

Star Quilts

I have been on a roll at the quilt studio lately, finally finishing up quilts that I pieced during Covid. The first of these was a very late wedding gift for my niece and her husband. 

I completed the top nearly three years ago, but Covid closed the quilt studio and when it re-opened I thought I was too out of practice at free-hand quilting to risk working on such an important quilt. When I learned that QuiltPath had implemented a new feature, called "Eclipse," which allows you to pick an overall pattern but define areas to leave unquilted, I realized I had a solution. I excluded the star points and instructed QuiltPath to quilt the background with simple wavy lines. I finished by hand quilting the star points with light grey pearl cotton.

I chose a pretty floral for the backing and a modern gray for the binding.

I am quite pleased with how it turned out and hope the not so newly-wed couple will enjoy it for years to come.

I finished another quilt in time to give to my best running buddy and dear friend for Christmas. Though it is also a star quilt, with its dozens of stars and a decidedly feminine feel, it is as different as could be from the wedding quilt. 

I alternated quarter square triangles, made with mostly small scale florals, with low volume squares. I quilted this one using QuiltPath's "multi-placement" function which allows you to specify multiple blocks to be quilted in one pass, each with the same design.

I really like this style of quilting as the quilt design follows the pieced design and results in interesting secondary patterns. It has become my signature style of quilting.

Many thanks go to Susan and Chris at Over the Top Quilting in Cedar Park, Texas, for their guidance and encouragement. It is always a joy to spend time in their studio!

A New Quilt for the Sleeping Porch

I've written about Thanksgiving in the Texas Hill Country before, noting that we enjoy sleeping outdoors in one of our little screened cabins or on the sleeping porch. This year was no different in spite of unusually rainy weather.  Thanks to deep eaves and minimal wind the sleeping porch stayed nice and dry. Piled with flannel sheets, a heavy wool blanket and three quilts my bed was cozy as could be. I slept incredibly well! These are all quilts that I have made over the years, with the top one completed the weekend before Thanksgiving.

It's such a cheerful quilt. I think it looks terrific on the bed! 

The quilt is made entirely of "Economy Blocks," which are just squares in a square, in this case four progressively larger squares. I used darker blocks on the outside to make a wide border then added smaller on-point squares for an outer border.

Except for the solids the fabrics are from my seemingly endless stash of vintage fabrics acquired years ago at the Austin Quilt Guild show. Most are florals, but there are also quite a few with fun and quirky designs, such as umbrellas, police cars, and landscapes.

I used a multi-colored southwestern design fabric (also from the vintage stash) for the border. This might seem like an odd choice, but the quilt was incredibly busy already so I figured I'd go all in with the busyness.

I quilted it (on an APQS long arm machine at Over the Top Quilting in Cedar Park) block by block using two very simple designs and the handy QuiltPath feature that allows you to set up sewing of multiple blocks at once. 

I've been busy in the quilt studio this fall so I'll try to come back here soon with details on some of the other quilts I've recently completed.

Stopover in London

En route to South Africa last summer (more about that in subsequent posts) we stopped for two nights in London, using the time to acclimate to a new time zone and to wander around London, stopping as we came upon places that interested us (and weren't too crowded). 

One stop was Sir John Soane's Museum on the north side of Lincoln's Inn Fields, London's largest public square. Sir John Soane (1753-1837) was a renowned neo-classical architect and collector, amassing a trove of sculptures, paintings, architectural remnants, and more, which he artfully arranged and cleverly stored in his home, itself a collection of three residences. Today's visitors see the home largely as it looked upon Sir John's death. Just about every surface is covered, every nook and cranny stuffed with treasures. Here is just a small sample. 

Outside of the museum, we strolled through Lincoln's Inns Fields, stopped at the Seven Stars for lunch,

 

and explored the weekend-quiet streets, including Serle Street, adjacent to the Royal Courts of Justice. 

Coming out on Chancery Lane, 

we eventually made our way south to the Strand and crossed the Thames to the Southbank boardwalk. Seeing St. Paul's Cathedral (dating from the 17th century), modern financial district towers, and construction cranes in a single frame reminds me of London's long-standing vibrance and continued renewal.  

We also took in Big Ben, newly and brilliantly emerged from a renovation that kept it encased in scaffolding for five years.

The Houses of Parliament were equally brilliant.

While we walked most places, we did use the tube to get to and from Heathrow Airport, as well as around town. I love the older stations for their beautiful tile work and fun graphics.

One of our stops was the Old Brompton Road in South Kensington, home of Shaukat Fabrics, an amazing fabric store that carries an enormous selection of wools, silks and cottons, and notably, a wider collection of Liberty fabrics than Liberty of London just a few miles away. 

Their prices are quite competitive, and they ship so I picked up several yards of tana lawn, 

including one version of the Betsy print so that I could incorporate it into my Sew.be sew along Betsy nine-patch quilt. As you can see, I used other prints for some, actually most, of the blocks because I just didn't have enough different Betsy fabrics in my stash. Out of 144 blocks, I think I have four Betsy prints, so maybe I should name the finished quilt "Betsy Comes for a Visit." Anyway, I have completed all 144 blocks and assembled them into a top, so it is now in the queue to be quilted and bound. 

I have a small but precious stash of Liberty tana lawn and I credit this project with forcing me to actually cut into it. Thank you to Bec Brennan for getting me over that hurdle! I'm already planning my next quilt using Liberty fabric!