Grand Coeur

I'm going to try and ease myself back into regular blogging by sharing the two quilts which have been published since I vanished from here. In that time we've had a fabulous family week at the snow - the highlight of which was probably tracking myself skiing at just over 115 kilometres an hour! I've also been busy with work, meeting some other publishing deadlines, and writing a dozen or more blog posts in my head!

This is Grand Coeur.

It's actually named after one of the ski runs at Falls Creek, where we were skiing a few weeks ago. I chose the name because the grey background print and the red print look snowflakey to me, and it means 'Big Heart' in French.

It's made entirely from a fairly new fabric range called Primrose Sands by Australian designer Helen Stubbings. I was honoured to be asked to design a quilt to feature the fabrics. I actually ended up using a limited selection of the range for my baby-size applique quilt (it's about 40in square).

The hearts were layered from three different fabrics and I had fun showcasing the stripe in an unusual way - and of course I couldn't resist using the stripe for the binding as well! But to add more definition to the edge of the quilt, the binding has faux piping (that red strip is actually part of the binding!).

I used quite a few different quilting designs which came about more by accident than design - but looking at the whole quilt, I think it works perfectly. The feathers in the centre were chosen because I was tired of the swirls, but now I love the contrast, and feel they wouldn't show to such effect if the background quilting were matching feathers.

The hearts were quilted along the lines of the fabric print. There really wasn't any other option. They needed quilting densely - the comparison photo above shows how puffy the one on the left was before quilting - and I couldn't bring myself to detract from my favourite print by quilting something else all over it. Luckily the print lent itself well to quilting along the design, although it was quite fiddly - the closer photos above show the actual stitching better.

The pattern for Grand Coeur is in Australian Patchwork & Quilting Vol 24 No 1. It was the August issue, so in Australia, you'll need to check via here for back issues.