Curio Hills

Last weekend my daughter came home for a couple of days for Mother's Day.  We had a lovely time, making nice meals together and chatting. On Mother's Day morning we participated in the Mother's Day Classic, we did the 4 km walk together, in our town the walk is along our river and it was really gorgeous.  We went out for morning tea with some other family, including my mother, and then Indy left to go back to Melbourne. 

Sometimes I can find myself getting a bit lonely when she first leaves after a weekend together, so I threw myself into some 'selfish sewing' just for me.  I finished this quilt top which I'd started at our little sewing retreat at Bordertown a few weeks ago.

The pattern is from a recent copy of Quilty magazine.  It's a great beginners quilting magazine, I really like some of the very simple patterns they have, which are very suitable for beginners.  Another nice extra they offer is that you can mail order kits to make some of their quilts.

 

 I modified the pattern Trail Marker by Ashley Newcomb, who writes the blog Film in the Fridge .

  

The background is a cream Spotlight shot cotton, it's so soft and lovely warm colour.  For the hills I used a layer cake of Basic Grey's Curio.  It's an old line which I've been waiting for the perfect project to use.  All the hills are improv pieced, so are different sizes and the sides are different angles.  Alot of fun to sew up, although this method does waste alot of material.  I had to go and buy more background to finish the quilt top.

I offset each row so that the hills weren't directly underneath each other, by adding various lengths of the background fabric to the beginning and end of each row.  I also added a strip of background to the top and bottom of the quilt so that the hills appear to 'float' in the quilt.   

 

I only cut two hills from each piece of fabric in the layer cake, so I have quite a pile of scraps left over.  I'm hoping I can use them to make something, although of course some of them are odd shapes.  I'm not the only quilter who hangs onto piles of scraps because they are too pretty to throw out I guess!