Friday, October 20, 2023

Gooseberry Hill - A New Quilt Pattern

Hello Everyone!

It's been awhile, but unfortunately, some family matters have slowed me down dramatically since mid-July.

However, I'm finally able to release my newest pattern, Gooseberry Hill! It's now available on my website, and you can choose between a paper pattern, mailed to you, or an instant PDF download. The paper pattern is 17 pages, 6 of which are color. The PDF download is 19 pages, with 8 color pages.

Gooseberry Hill

 

The little gooseberries in the appliqué block are 11/32” in diameter (that’s just a little larger than ¼”). In the past, when I’ve appliquéd circles that small or smaller, such as the eye on a bird, I’ve turned the edges using needle turn appliqué. That worked well when the little circle was an isolated shape. But since each of the four stems in the Gooseberry Hill block has 28 berries, I wanted them to be uniform. My typical technique for preparing the pre–turned edges for circles wasn’t working for these small berries, so out of necessity I came up with a new way of preparing these tiny berries with a turned edge.

I’ve included the instructions for this new technique in the pattern instructions for Gooseberry Hill. I hand pieced the LeMoyne stars for the quilt, however the instructions are for machine piecing, which I've found seems to be the preferred method for the majority of quilters!

Gooseberry Hill was made using fabrics I designed that can be found on the print-on-demand fabric site, Spoonflower:

And I've also been designing more prints for my Spoonflower shop. This past month I've been concentrating on geometrics. Namely, ticking stripes and checks. Big checks, medium checks and micro checks. Some of the prints are scaled specifically for quilts or apparel, and others for home decor. I wanted some stripes that had the look of grain sacks for table runners, and here are two stripes that I've designed for Fall - orange and black and black and orange:



I have the fabric printed on linen/cotton canvas, and I can't wait to get these stitched up for my table. Just some simple turned edges on all four sides, and voila! I'm done!

Until next time!

Martha