Improvquilting - a phrase most suited to me!

I have been following the most amazingly inspiring hashtag on Instagram recently, so I wanted to explore it myself and show you a few images that have inspired me recently, as it is just SO full of inspiration and fantastic colours and patterns.

#Improvquilting. 

It can literally mean anything you want it to mean - quilting with no particular plan; using scraps or randomly chosen fabrics; playing with composition or picking a theme to try to work around.

It has also inspired me to try something a bit out of the box - a colour palette that I don't usually use (well, slightly out of my range but not all that far if I'm honest!). I pulled out scraps and leftovers from other projects, sewed them up at random and put them together.  It's not quite finished yet, as I'm now concentrating on using it for a machine quilting pattern sampler, but you can see a few sneak peeks here...

I started by using leftovers from two or three of my recent projects and cutting them into strips and connecting them.  Using the 'Trip Around The World' technique I put the strips onto the central flowery fabric. It has turned into something that looks a lot more complicated than it really is. 

A post shared by Wendy House Arts (@wendyhousearts) on Jun 22, 2018 at 4:55am PDT

 Once it was all together in one piece, I was a bit underwhelmed with the colour mix, so I decided to add a bit of orange and yellow into the mix before I put it together and started quilting.

A post shared by Wendy House Arts (@wendyhousearts) on Jun 28, 2018 at 12:16am PDT

A post shared by Wendy House Arts (@wendyhousearts) on Jun 26, 2018 at 4:01am PDT

Now I'm experimenting with the filler patterns, using freehand machine quilting, so I don't have a finished article just yet, but I will let you all have a look once I'm done.

Here are a few images of quilts that came out of this hashtag and were the ones to inspire me to do my own thing...


I just LOVE the bright plain colours of this one, and the large blocks that are unapolagetically uneven and in your face.  It just seems so happy!

A post shared by Leanne (@shecanquilt) on Apr 22, 2018 at 4:57pm PDT

Mr_happy_accidents is one of my favourite instaquilters as he uses the medium in a very modern way, cutting, adding, quilting, framing different bits to draw your eye to different places.

A post shared by my happy accidents (@mr_happy_accidents) on Jun 22, 2018 at 10:36am PDT

 The colours on this one are a world apart from the ones I am usually drawn to, but it has a very calming feel to it, with the muted colours emerging from the black and white as if they are shy.

A post shared by Amanda (@mandyandydesigns) on Jun 28, 2018 at 5:55am PDT

So as you can see, the idea behind this word #improvquilting can be interpreted in so many different ways that it is almost a quilting world in itself.  There are no patterns here, only your imagination, random picks, following a thread to see where it takes you.  This is what I love the most about quilting.  There is a tradition to it that cannot be denied, but there is also a bright new take to it that blends almost seamlessly with it but can be a breath of freash air for anyone tiring of traditional blocks.

Orchard Yard

Well, this is a bit of a change.  Looking back, I can see that I have been woefully bad at updating this blog and I'm going to be working on that.  I have more time to be thinking about it at the moment, as I have now opened my own little artists' studio and teaching space.  

We had a rather large life change last year - I handed my notice in at my school admin job, and after a few discussions between family members, things are rather different now to what you may have seen on my previous blog posts.  

We have moved house.  

But not just to another house in the town, and not just to another town.  We have moved the length of the country, from Kent to Dumfriesshire.  Not just as a small family though - both my husband's parents, and my mum and step-dad have also moved up, so we have a great little family unit up here.  I also discovered that a friend from school is not running a charity in Carlisle called the Oak Tree Animals' Charity, which is only half an hour from where I am living.  This became a bit of a fantastic opportunity, as they were converting a set of stables called Orchard Yard into small craft units and I was asked if I would like to take one.
So, fast forward a year from when we moved, and I now have a gorgeous little studio unit, in the most relaxing peaceful countryside corner of Carlisle.  It is on a larger site with a Tea Room, a nature trail and land that you can wander round and talk to horses, goats, cats and dogs.  Seriously, if you are anywhere nearby I recommend coming here - it's only 5 minutes away from the M6 in between 2 villages called Cumwhinton and Wetheral, a few miles away from Brampton, which is where Carlisle Airport will be opening soon.  What a find!

Anyway, I now come here 4 days a week, for my own textile practise and to teach people sewing, patchwork, quilting and machine embroidery.  It's just idyllic!  In Orchard Yard we have a Massage Therapist; CL Body Therapy, 

a lovely little boutique shop called Jens Den, 

a Silver Jewellery maker; Lapwing Silver 

and the Tack Shack, an outlet for second hand tack that is surplus to the Charity's requirements.  

I now teach sewing, how to use a sewing machine, patchwork, machine embroidery and anything else you might want to know about (within reason!).  I run group workshops on the Oak Tree site, and I can bring the workshop to local groups as well, such as a WI meeting or a quilting group.  I'm so happy to finally be set up doing this - it's been my aim for many years now, and it's just fantastic to have my own space!