Colour Inspiration

 On a visit to London a few years back I sat down on a bench in Covemt Garden to rest my weary feet, and this rather quirky colour combination grabbed my attention. Coal, purple, stone, teal... now this was not something I would have thought of combining in a quilt, but I was amazed by how well it worked, and luckily I thought to snap a photo right away. Of course there has been plenty of new inspiration coming my way since then, but when reading about The Blogger Bundle Mosaic over at I'm a Ginger Monkey this image came to mind. Thanks to the palette generator in Big Huge Labs I was able to translate the photo to a set of colours and used that to create my Covent Garden Mosaic of fabric from Pink Castle Fabrics :

I might need to add a few more fabrics to make this work in real life, but on the whole this could make a very pleasing starting point for a new quilt, I think.
The fabrics are: 1. Outfoxed Confetti in Purple, 2. Outfoxed Jewels in Purple, 3. Ruby Star Shining Retro Typewriters in Mustard, 4. Kona Cotton in Stone, 5. In The Kitchen Heath in Chartreuse, 6. Loulouthi Coreopsis in Icicle, 7. Hello Pilgrim Jewels in Turquoise, 8. Truck Stop Dot in Blue, 9. Kona Cotton in Pond, 10. Kona Cotton in Coal, 11. Walk in the Woods Simple Dots in Cloud, 12. Walk in the Woods Circle Stripes in Cloud.

Red and green

 No, it's not Christmas. I'm just a little late with my Project Spectrum project for May. Not a huge thing, just another mug rug. I just grabbed some scraps and stitched them together, cutting some gentle curves and slanted stitching lines. I included a green strip for interest and quilted it with green thread. The binding is from my jar of leftover binding scraps. The red one was too short, so I included a multi-coloured piece as well.

While I was in full swing, I might as well continue with June and a green mug rug as well. For this one I cut four rectangles of the light green and added strips randomly at both sides, leaving a strip of the green foundation in the middle. The rectangles were trimmed and stitched together and I quilted a spirally diamond from the middle.
I will keep looking for green inspiration throughout the month, before I start concentrating on blues for July.

Green inspiration

Some green inspiration to share today. I have been pinning green images to keep in the Project Spectrum spirit, where June is the green month. I had lots of ideas for May, but didn't actually get round to starting a red project until the very last day. I still have a bit of binding to stitch, before I disclose the result - a whole mug rug! Not much, I know, but still... And today I actually made a green one as well, so with a bit of hand stitching tonight I might just have something to show you tomorrow!

Interwoven ribbons

Another cold weekend meant more sewing, and a few episodes of Northern Exposure (I adore John Corbett, and treated myself to the boxed set of DVDs) into the evening I managed to finish the binding. I had originally thought I'd use red for the binding, but didn't have enough of the one I wanted, so I ended up with a black and white stripe instead, and I'm glad I did. It picks up the black lines in the white fabric in the middle and makes it a better match for the smaller quilt I've got on the wall already. I quilted it with (sort of) straight lines randomly criss-crossing from edge to edge trying to avoid corners between the blocks, where you get a lot of seams meeting.

And here they are together. They are very bright, aren't they? But then I tend to go for bright, clear colours, because they are the ones that make my heart sing. The trend in my guild is very subdued, taupe and soft pastels at the moment, so mine don't really fall in line. But then neither do I ;-) Or maybe I'm right on the cusp of a new trend: I just noticed that the Pantone colour for 2010 is Turquoise. Anyone visiting my blog will have noticed that this is a colour close to my heart. So maybe 2010 is my year?

According to the Pantone site, Turquoise is believed to be a protective talisman in many cultures, a color of deep compassion and healing, and a color of faith and truth, inspired by water and sky.

"With both warm and cool undertones, Turquoise pairs nicely with any other color in the spectrum. Turquoise adds a splash of excitement to neutrals and browns, complements reds and pinks, creates a classic maritime look with deep blues, livens up all other greens, and is especially trend-setting with yellow-greens."

You just can't go wrong with Turquoise it seems. ;-)

Kaffe knits again

-and so do I! I have been inspired by Kaffe Fassett since I came across his first knitting book and always loved his way with colours. Here at last was somone who didn't frown at using all kinds of bright colours together - the more the merrier. My sense of colour has never been of the subdued "tasteful" variety, and it was a relief to find someone who said it was OK to use bold colour and even said so In A Book! (And we all know that if a book says so, it's true, right?) Not only did the guy knit, but he alsa made the most wonderful tapestries. My bookshelves have gradually been filled with new books by this wonderful designer over the years. My interest in knitting waned for a while after I got a new passion: quilting. These days I consider myself a quilter more than anything else, but slowly, slowly knitting has been sneaking up on me again. Inspired by numerous blogs I decided to try my hand at a pair of toe-up socks with short row heels. I'm always up for a challenge, and this way of going about it just had to be tested. I found the perfect yarn for it - Regia self striping in a colourway designed by none other than Kaffe Fassett - who could resist it?

I tried several patterns and the toe was knitted and unravelled three times before I got a shape I liked. This formula at Knitty helped a great deal. My knitting doesn't seem as even as it used to be, but I suppose practise will make better, if not perfect. It took a while to get the heel right, but I think I have mastered it at last, and my first sock is almost done. I will make an effort to finish the other one as well ;-)

Today's arrival may slow me down a bit, though - this exciting book arrived today, and I'm looking forward to spending some time curled up under a quilt with it.

Within sight of this lovely cushion - it's far too new and precious to be used

yet! I bought the kit at Ehrman's in London years ago. It's designed by Elian McGrady who apparently worked with mr. Fassett before she started making her own designs. You can see the influence, but she creates lovely work in her own right. The kit had been languishing on my shelf for ages before my mother came to the rescue a year ago, and last week she had finished it! It looks just wonderful, doesn't it? Thank you mum!

Experimental spirit

Last summer my sister made a raspberry liqueur that by Christmas was so lovely you would almost swallow your tongue to get every bit of that summery berry taste. I'm not really that into liqueurs, but because of the tartness of the raspberries this wasn't too sweet, so this summer I thought I'd have a go. The recipe is quite simple: fill a jar with raspberries until it is completely full. Add sugar until it is completely full- the sugar runs down between the berries so the jar isn't completely full after all. I used a kilo of berries (just over two pounds), and half a kilo of sugar.
Add spirit. I used vodka because that doesn't have a distinct taste of it's own, and chose the prettiest bottle I could find - that's how much I know about vodka... Again, fill the jar.
Close the lid firmly - this canning jar has a rubber seal to make it completely tight - and shake gently to dissolve the sugar. The idea now is to keep turning the jar about once a week until Christmas, letting all the berry juice add flavour to the vodka/sugar mix and produce a ruby red liqueur. Apparently the berries lose their colour during the process. The contents of the jar has to be filtered, of course, to separate the berries from the liqueur.
After filling my jar I had vodka left and started looking around for something else to experiment with. I watched Nigella (on TV, not in real life...) searching her pantry the other day and she pointed to a bottle of lemon liqueur she had brought home from Italy. Hm, I wondered - could I get good results witht he same method using lemons...?
Nothing ventured, nothing gained, so I decided to have a go. I used a smaller jar, this being an experiment and all... filled it with slices of lemon, sugar and the remaining third of the vodka. We'll see. I might have ruined some perfectly good vodka, but as I rarely touch the stuff (I prefer a good whisky), I would just have had it sitting in my cupboard for ever, so never mind. Now the deed is done and the big question is: will I be able to wait until Christmas to sample these...

Primary colours

More about this later.