Peta's Framed Mini-Quilt

Our good friend Peta recently turned 70 years old. Peta is a wonderful, joyful character and enjoys creating her own wonderful art-quilts and handmade treasures.....including the most delicious sweets (so good, i've often requested recipes for!).

As a little gift, i made her this framed, mini-quilt using some of my very favourite fabrics (including some Kaffe Fassett and my favourite blues and greens of course!). You might recognise some of them from what i reckon is my all-time favourite quilt, Dreaming of Jacarandas.

I used a gold thread to quilt 1/4 inch from the seams and i love the way the it shines in the sunlight.

Happy 70th birthday Peta! Here's to a great year ahead and plenty more birthdays for us to celebrate together.

Linking up with:
- Amanda Jean for Finish it Up Friday and
- Lorna for Lets Bee Social

Dreaming of Jacarandas

Hip hip hooray! It's finished. Waahooooo!

This quilt was inspired by a painting by Australian artist, Ken Done called Jacaranda reef . The colours in this painting drew me to it instantly and i knew i had to at least have a print of it on my wall.

When i found some beautiful, floral, Kaffe Fassett fabrics a couple of years ago that had some of the colours in them, i knew the colours would lure me to make something based on the Jacaranda inspiration. If you've never seen a Jacaranda tree before, when in flower they are covered in the most spectacular purple/blue, which fall and cover the ground, creating fields of  'purple snow'. Just gorgeous!

When my husband and i decided we were going to visit Portugal this year, i knew this was my opportunity to make a special quilt for my mother and father in-law, Rosa Maria and Ze Carlos, who live there. I got out my notebook and fabrics and came up with a quilt top, based on string piecing. I had plenty of blues, greens and purples in my stash to match and felt that the strips would still show those beautiful florals of Kaffe's.

To be honest, i didn't think it would take me nearly as long as it did, but after several months of sewing strips together while my little boy slept after lunch, it was finished.

Measuring just under 2x2m, my friend Carol Ikin in the Blue Mountains quilted it for me on her long arm machine using swirls in line green (thanks Carol...you've done a beautiful job).

For the back i chose to use some of the pieced string triangles left over to join together one of my favourite Kaffe Fassett fabrics with a green and white spot pattern. I machine-bound the quilt using some pretty blue fabric left over, hoping it will be super sturdy and ready for lots of use....
It has turned out to be my absolute favourite quilt so far and will be hard to let go of.

But i'm happy knowing it's going to my dear Portuguese family. Best wishes Rosa Maria and Ze Carlos.....i do hope you'll love it!

Linking up with Lorna for Let's Bee Social and Gemma for I Quilt Thursdays @ Pretty Bobbins

Last but not least.....

And finally in the placemat series, and quite possibly my favourite.

I made this placemat using some scraps left over from a quilt i've made for my MIL (stay tuned....i'm in the process of binding this one so will add a post on it shortly). These are my favourite colours at the moment and i really like the straight 1/4 inch quilting i did with my walking foot.

The seams got a little bulky where the triangles meet, but it was the perfect way to use up the leftover string pieced triangles.