Bluebird Park quilt completed

Here it is.  The quilt I made from the Moda Bluebird Park layer cake is now finished and I am so pleased with the final result.

Bluebird Park really is a most charming fabric collection  featuring  whimsical animals (I love the rabbits), balloons and bicycles.  And the colours are so pretty too with a lovely mix of teal, yellow, tangerine, grey and green.

The hydrangea fabric in teal from the same collection was used for the backing fabric and I chose the textured yellow for the binding.  Dancing hearts seemed the perfect choice for the long-arm quilting design and it shows up so well after washing - that little bit of shrinkage producing a lovely vintage puckered look.

The finished quilt measures 150cm by 130cm, the perfect size for a lap quilt or for throwing over a sofa.  It is currently on display at Fabric HQ in their fabulous new shop at Layby Farm, Stoke Mandeville, HP22 5XJ.  

Layer Cake quilt

Recently I have been experimenting with some of the many pre-cut fabrics available.  Moda is the king of pre-cuts and my latest quilt is made from one of their layer cake fabric collections.  

Layer cakes comprise 10 inch squares of fabric cut from one fabric collection with 42 fabric squares in each pack.  They are a great way to try an overall collection as there is at least one square of each of the designs with multiple squares of many of the plain or small patterned fabrics.  I chose to use this one called Bluebird Park by Kate and Birdie Paper Co. which features whimsical designs of bicycles, rabbits and birds.

One downside with pre-cuts is that you may find that a favourite image on the larger designs has been cut through the middle.   I find this the most frustrating aspect as it is these designs that I find myself itching to fussy cut to pick out a particular part of the design.  However this is a minor quibble.

Before cutting, I squared up each fabric swatch to ensure that it was 10 inches square.  It is probably not really necessary to do this however I find it helps ensure accuracy when cutting and sewing the blocks.  Initially I had planned to use the layout for the Basic Math quilt on the Moda Bakeshop and cut my squares accordingly.

But then I changed my mind, mainly because I couldn't decide which fabrics to leave out (the Basic Math quilt only uses 40 fabric squares), and decided on a variation of what I have since found out is called Disappearing Nine Patch.  Basically the original layer cake square is reassembled with different fabrics in each of the four positions and then neighbouring blocks are rotated.  

After much fiddling about with the layout, the quilt top is now finished and ready to go to the long arm quilter.