London Baby!

Jennifers Modern Mini Challenge came at an interesting time for me. I had just made my first ever mini quilt which was for my swap partner in For The Love Of Solids. I had so much fun making it and also because I have been looking at the amazing mini quilts on peoples walls in Sundays Sewing Space, I decided that I could easily become addicted to mini quilts.

On the other hand I am smack bang in the middle of moving from one side of the world to the other and really needed to pack. I hate packing to move and will do anything to put it off so the modern mini challenge became my distraction.

I have loved this project so much and thought I would share a bit about the process with you rather than just the end product.

I mentioned in an earlier post that im finding muted colours in art and illustration really inspiring at the moment. I love illustration and have been pinning loads recently so I knew I wanted a mini quilt that looked like  an illustration or poster. These are just a few of the things that I love

Source: etsy.com via LawsonandLotti on Pinterest

I love the muted colours in this

Source: rebelform.shop.textalk.se via LawsonandLotti on Pinterest

These houses are cute and the colours are fab

Source: etsy.com via LawsonandLotti on Pinterest

I think this colour pallette is really cool

Source: iheartprintsandpatterns.blogspot.com via LawsonandLotti on Pinterest

Source: modcloth.com via LawsonandLotti on Pinterest

I love these illustrations and so a plan began to form. A quilt version of the above illustration but featuring a place that I love.

I decided on fabrics, I wanted mainly solids to give it that illustration look

I chose my size, cut out my applique and ironed in place. I machine stitched everything in place and then stood back and looked. Then I began to question myself. The colour was all down one side, things didnt look balanced, should I have done everything in muted blues, greens and greys? Oh well too late now. I would have to add extra colour, this is when I added the phone box and the sun peaking from behind the cloud.

This made me much happier. So what to do next? How to quilt it? I asked my family what they thought of as quintessentially British and decided maybe I could stitch some extra things in.

I drew up this very quick terrible rough sketch.

The pen shows the applique and the pencil shows some quilting ideas

Then I decided I wanted it to look like I had just sat and doodled but I wanted it to be subtle. So I chose a thread the same colour as the background, and I started doodling with my machine!

A couple of my ideas were a bit complex to just doodle (the crown and the lamp post) so I used an embroidery pen to lightly sketch them on first, The rest I did free hand. I then decided I wanted to put London on it. I originally thought that I would FMQ this like I had been doing, but then changed my mind and appliqued it. I FMQ'd a few british sayings though.

And the last dilemma was how to bind it. I considered using the background fabric or doing an invisible binding but then I realised that posters frequently have white borders, so I went with skinny white sides and a deeper white top and bottom.

And here it is - London baby! (was anyone else ever obsessed with Friends?)

Im so pleased with how it turned out. Its going to go on the wall of my new studio and remind me of home.
Thanks Jennifer for holding this fab challenge, I have loved every minute of it