Downton Garden

I have lots of quilt projects that I could be working on :) but as soon as I saw the new line of 'Downton Abbey' fabrics by Makower I knew I wanted to start a new quilt with them. I am not normally a fan of the 2 1/12" strip rolls you can buy, largely because I don't normally like the quick quilt patterns that are designed for them. However they are a nice way of having a small piece of each fabric in a line, so I bought one from The fat Quarters shop here in the UK, it arrived in record time (love fast customer service!)

They call it a "Roll up" - 40 x 2 1/2" strips I have removed the dark tone on tone black, navy & burgundy strips as they didn't give the soft look I want for his quilt. The fabric line is "Downton Abbey: Women's Collection" The fabrics on the right are from my stash. Want to see what I am making?

This lap size Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt called 'Route 66' by Di Ford from this fabulous book...

I love hexagon quilts and have made several over the years, but never one with the diamonds/triangles between the hexagon flowers. The Downton fabrics will be enough for the hexagon rosettes, my quilt will be slightly smaller than Di's as I want to use these Marti Michell acrylic templates that I have rather than the templates from the pattern. These sets from Marti are brilliant, you can rotary cut several layers at once very accurately.

These stash fabrics are for the small diamonds and the surrounding cream hexagons: The solid duck egg is from 'Rural Jardin' by French General and the cream/blue fabric is 'Quilter's palette flowers' from Makower.

These two will form the inner/outer border. The mauve is from 'Vanity Fair c.1892' by Nancy Gere and the floral is 'Samantha c.1900' by Sara Morgan for Blue Hill fabrics.

I have had all of these fabrics for a long time, no idea if they are still available so I hope I have enough! I plan to hand piece this one, I love having hand projects ready to work on when I am out of the house or while 'watching' TV with the family. I get most of my sewing done this way, I love my sewing machine but using it always seems like work.