Rainbow Ripples

At last, that yellow ball in the sky known as the sun has peeked through the clouds to show its face.  I grabbed the opportunity and headed off outdoors.

Sunny weather and flowers just seem to go together.  I hope soon there might be some real ones in the garden but I'll make do with this old thrifty book with its gorgeous colour plates for now.

I wonder if any eagle-eyed readers spotted something familiar in the background?  Because when the sun shines after months of gloom, you know it's time to pull your finger out and get snapping all those quilts you've worked on throughout the Winter.

First up, is this ripple quilt, inspired of course, by the gorgeous crocheted ripple blanket of recent times.  If it can be made in wool, why not fabric, I thought?

I started it way back, here I was working on the hand quilting in the park, with the Munchkin.  It has been finished a while, just waiting its moment on the washing line of glory!

I love this quilt.  It's only small, as I don't like hand quilting large quilts but I do enjoy big-stitch quilting with perle cottons on something of this size.  The fabrics are many of my favourites, mainly 1930's reproduction in style, and I LOVE the Liberty backing.

I didn't get the rippley thing out of my system and some while later, I pondered that it would be possible to achieve the same chevron effect through a different method, rather than the half-square triangles I had used to make my "Rainbow Ripple" quilt.

What about simple blocks made of two stripes of fabric but then set on point in the quilt to achieve the rippley look?  And so its friend was born.

This time, I went for the addition of a stripe of white, too.  I like the fresh modern look this gives the quilt. It also has many of the same gorgeous 1930's inspired cottons in yummy shades. This design is a bit quicker to make than the half-square triangles, so I made a bigger quilt, but there is a fair bit of conscious keeping track required when it comes to sewing the blocks together as they're set on point (like a diamond).

I machine quilted this one and was so pleased with it that I felt it deserved me letting go of some of my hoarded Cath Kidston rosebud fabric for the backing.

What an idyllic afternoon it was yesterday, reclining on the garden bench surrounded by pretty cushions and quilts, finishing off the new Cath Kidston book, listening to the birds.  I hope we can look forward to many more days like that in the coming months.

The Rainbow Chevron quilt is currently waiting patiently for a new loving owner in my blogshop should you fancy a spot of pretty garden relaxing yourself.