Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 97 i Today's Quilter

Hello, and greetings for the new year ahead! 2023 is upon us and here’s to a wonderful twelve months filled with joy, hope and plenty of sewing time. To start you off, we’ve filled this issue with lots of inspiring projects. There’s a classic Tree of Life block (in soothing shades of blue), 6in machine-pieced hexagons, plus a sampler frame quilt by Eileen Shone, a designer who is new to the magazine. After spending time with family and friends indoors over the festive period, and enduring a cold winter, we think Jo Colwill’s gorgeous appliqué design, Home is Where the Heart is, is just the make to freshen up your décor and herald the warmer spring days to come. Jane Rae takes a look at how quilting – and any…

It’s not so long ago that scenes of women sewing, presented in art or literature, were signifiers of industry and moral rectitude. The social expectation for women to confine themselves to the domestic sphere with their needlework is not an arrangement that we associate with the act of stitching for wellbeing today. However, as we travel through history, there are glimpses of more empowering experiences through stitch. Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter has a complicated relationship with her needlework, but the needle and thread are fundamental to the safe haven Hester inhabits as a seamstress in a seventeenth-century Puritan community in Massachusetts. In Tracy Chevalier’s book The Last Runaway, Honor Bright, a nineteenth-century Quaker woman emigrating to America, hints at the calming nature of working with her hands –…

BEHIND THE QUILT FLORAL DIAMONDS “This quilt was inspired by a vintage quilt but, in the original, the hexagons were a lot smaller. I wanted this quilt to grow quickly and to make the most of some bold prints. “It’s a great quilt for busting your stash as the quilt works best with lots of different prints, giving it a bold, graphic feel. The centre of each lozenge or diamond is a low-volume or white print to give focus to the shape. This is then surrounded by the bold print. Try to choose prints that will contrast when next to each other to keep the definition of the shapes created with the hexagons. Although I have used as many prints as I could, I have repeated one print on both…

An early sign that spring will soon be on its way, the first snowdrop is a joyful sighting in our gardens and woodlands. Snowdrops bloom as early as January, whatever the weather, and will even push through snow-covered ground. Surprisingly, the snowdrop may not actually be a UK native species, as there are no records of it growing wild in the UK until the late eighteenth century. Our delicate nodding snowdrops have been planted in a beautiful wide bowl complete with an intricate Nine-Patch block, which includes both FPP and the 4-in-1 Flying Geese techniques. We will also be exploring our first curves to achieve the bowl shape. Despite being a symbol of hope for better times ahead, to see a single snowdrop flower was once viewed as a sign…

While the first evidence of quilts in Britain dates back to the Middle Ages, the oldest surviving quilts are from the early 1700s. If you ignore the fabrics used, what amazes me about these quilts is how they could easily have been designed and made today. It is this connection to our past that excites me the most. Looking at the 1718 silk coverlet we see blocks that we readily use today: the central Lone Star, Square in a Square, Nine Patch, Four Patch, Hourglass and so it goes on. Many quilt designs from the past can easily be seen as a design we could see today and, with the inclusion of contemporary fabrics, would feel completely fresh, modern and up to date. Specific fabrics used for patchworks can put…

Appliqué is one of the most creative patchwork techniques, having no limitations of shape as pieces from one fabric are cut out and sewn onto another. It has a long history as a technique in Britain and has been used in not only coverlets and bed curtains, but also banners and other heraldic devices in earlier times. There were two types of appliqué that were practised: Broderie Perse and scrap appliqué. Broderie Perse entailed cutting out printed motifs from one fabric and stitching them onto another, whereas scrap appliqué allowed the maker to cut out their own shapes from scraps to then sew onto the background fabric. Both methods would use the same stitches to sew the cut-out pieces onto the background, which was usually buttonhole or blanket stitch. Turning…

There is possibly no greater link to our past than the excitement of seeing the blocks we make today in a quilt from over 200 years ago. The familiarity and recognition gives such a deep connection with the craft. Whether it is simple Four Patch blocks, Pinwheel, Hourglass, Half Square Triangles, Log Cabin or more complex Lone Star or Mariner’s Compass, to name but a few familiar styles, seeing our favourite blocks that we love to incorporate into our quilts today in past patchwork only deepens our love for quilting. We may have changed our techniques with how we make the blocks. Our HSTs and Flying Geese that we whip up today on our machines would originally have been hand sewn or paper-pieced. These simpler blocks are often used in…

Karen Lewis, although she considers herself a modern quilter, has always been fascinated with old quilts. In this exclusive supplement, she takes a look at some quilting styles that were popular in the past, and how many are still being used today. As she says, “If you ignore the fabrics used, what amazes me about these quilts is how they could easily have been designed and made today. It is this connection to our past that excites me the most.” Many quilt designs from the past can easily be seen as a design we could see today and, with the inclusion of contemporary fabrics, would feel completely fresh, modern and up to date. Karen takes us on a journey to look at popular styles of patchwork historically, and look at…

BLOCK OF THE MONTH APPLIQUÉ, PIECING AND FPP TEMPLATES ACTUAL SIZE PLEASE NOTE: Templates include seam allowances. Thank you for making this project from Today’s Quilter. The copyright of the patterns in this magazine are owned by or licensed to Immediate Media Company Bristol Limited and are for readers’ personal use only. Please do not share them online (even for free) or copy them multiple times without our permission. Where selling crafts based on these patterns is permitted (usually only to raise funds for charity), we’ll say so on the page. Copyright law protects creative work and unauthorised copying is illegal. We appreciate your help. DOWNLOAD THESE TEMPLATES FULL SIZE Visit our blog: www.gathered.how/todaysquilter today! BLOCK OF THE MONTH BLOCK LAYOUT ENLARGE 200% PLEASE NOTE: Templates DO NOT include seam…

Although made 100-150 years ago, military quilts fascinate me because of their uncanny resemblance to a quilt made today. The lack of pattern in the fabrics and the use of army outers, as well as the bright linings, very much make them akin to our modern quilts that have a penchant for solid fabrics. It would be very simple to mistake these for more recent makes. It is not known for sure whether these quilts were made by convalescing soldiers using scraps of fabrics found on the battlefields, but it is thought more likely that soldiers made them during the long hours of inaction more often than not, using leftover fabrics from making or altering uniforms. It could, of course, be a mixture of both. Interestingly, it was not just…

BEHIND THE QUILT INSPIRED BY TRADITION “The quilt I have designed for you reflects little change in design between quilts today and quilts from our past, and includes some of my favourite blocks – popular then and still so today – along with a needle-turn appliqué centre piece. As hand sewing is my preferred method of patchwork, to centre the quilt around the appliqué, akin to how framed quilts would have been made, felt the natural thing to do. When I started the central appliqué piece, it gave me the time to slowly stitch and visualise our ancestors doing exactly that – around some 300 years ago. My choice of fabrics also reflects fabrics used in the past and I took inspiration from a nineteenth-century wheels patchwork quilt made from…

THE BOOK SIMPLE DOUBLE-DIPPED QUILTS Double dipping is how quilt designer Kim Diehl describes taking a tried-and-true quilt block and adding a unique twist. With 10 stunning patterns ranging from bed-size to mini, each project features a Double-Take Tip with bonus alternate settings, patchwork tweaks and colour schemes. Simple Double-Dipped Quilts: Scrappy Quilts Built from Blocks with a Unique Twist by Kim Diehl is available to buy (RRP $29.99) from www.shopmartingale.com THE PATTERN STRAWBERRY THIEF Inspired by fabrics from the Kelmscott collection for FreeSpirit Fabrics featuring the famous design by William Morris, we think this quilt would look just as good using scraps from your fabric collection. Created from two blocks made in various colours, and with Pinwheels borders, you can show off your favourite feature print…

When learning how to make patchwork quilts, it’s drummed into us that key to attaining the best results is accuracy. From cutting out precisely – ensuring the correct seam allowance is added for the shape being worked with – sewing an exact ¼in seam (though some would say a scant ¼in seam to allow for the thickness of the thread), executing sharp and faultless points, to giving thought as to how to press the seams for the flattest and neatest appearance, consideration and care are the bywords for achieving excellence. But if the sums are wrong, no matter how accomplished one’s handiwork, things will not go together just so. GEOMETRY IN ACTION I wonder how many of us wished we’d paid more attention in maths lessons at school, not realising…

What we commonly know of today as English Paper Piecing was once described as mosaic patchwork, which makes complete sense. Different shapes were pieced together in a tessellating method with the fabrics wrapped around papers to keep the shapes intact while sewing. Due to the amount of time required to sew an English Paper Pieced quilt, this method of patchwork is thought to have been an activity of the middle and upper classes, who not only had ample leisure time to sit and sew the more intricate designs, but also had the education – or access to it – to be able to design the shapes in the first place. While today we have the luxury of purchasing sets of pre-cut papers for our use, or at the very least…

NEW FROM THE OLD APPLIQUÉ TEMPLATES ACTUAL SIZE PLEASE NOTE: Templates DO NOT include seam allowances. Thank you for making this project from Today’s Quilter. The copyright of the patterns in this magazine are owned by or licensed to Immediate Media Company Bristol Limited and are for readers’ personal use only. Please do not share them online (even for free) or copy them multiple times without our permission. Where selling crafts based on these patterns is permitted (usually only to raise funds for charity), we’ll say so on the page. Copyright law protects creative work and unauthorised copying is illegal. We appreciate your help.…