Over the last two to three weeks I’ve been working on a new quilt, I should have started it ages ago, it’s a wedding present for the young couple who married in May! In my defence I only got the colour preferences about a month before the wedding so there was no chance of having it made in time for the big day…and well the weeks and months pass by! I’m not very good without a deadline!

The bride and groom asked for sage green and creams. There didn’t seem to be much selection of greens in the local shops so I ordered a few fat quarters on line. It’s amazing how different two fabrics called sage green can be! Colour is very subjective, hopefully the end result will be sage green enough! I was pleased with the creams though which were mainly I think from B&M fabrics in Leeds, two have lots of hearts on and the more golden one has the words ‘threaded with love’ on. Very apt I thought!

For a pattern I chose one called Exploding Heart by Slice of Pi. With hindsight I might have been better choosing one which wasn’t quite so labour intensive but it’s a design which I’ve admired for a while. There’s lots of half square triangles and quarter square triangles, I started making the ones for the centre heart first which actually worked out better than I thought as I fairly quickly realised the centre squares needed to be in the darker shades of green with a few of the more gold ones interspersed. I’ve arranged them on my design wall and started stitching the rows across. How ever much you look at a quilt before you stitch it, there’s always one a little wrong that you don’t notice, I’ve spotted two triangles the same colour already but they’re staying!

Some of the fabric designs may seem pretty random but there was thought behind it! The bride is from a farming family, she’s spent many a happy day on her grandad’s and uncle’s farm, so there’s a grey/sage with farm animals on, another has cats on as they have two cats, another one is actually Gruffalo fabric but it’s a perfect sage green and I like the little pops of orange, they reminded me of her beautiful red hair. There’s a cream one with lines of music on too as she plays the saxophone very well.

Once I’d pieced the main heart I decided I needed to just settle down and make all the other blocks before I try and arrange them. There’s five different variations of pieced blocks, depending on how many cream triangles and how many green. It’s taken a while but I think I now have all the squares made, I have several piles on my cutting table!

I love how the sheep is peeping out of the block!

It’s a fair-sized quilt, about 72″ square when finished, so it’s not going to be easy to arrange them all as that’s bigger than my design wall! I might have to resort to the floor for the outer blocks, but hopefully soon I’ll be able to show you a finished top.