Thursday 25 September 2014

From A - Heather Ross Rainbow Quilt

Heather Ross' beautiful prints are part of what got me into quilting. Many, many years ago, my local yarn shop brought in a few of her fabrics just to see whether they would sell. My tuition-paying student brain couldn't quite justify buying more than a half yard of two different prints when I didn't even own a sewing machine.

Those two prints got me thinking about sewing and about how much I liked to sew when I was a kid. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that although I loved to knit, I really wanted to be able to sew. When my 25th birthday rolled around, I asked for a sewing machine.

Shortly after that, I bought fabric for the very first quilt I ever finished. It was a whole cloth baby quilt that I made using two prints I bought at the workroom not long after it opened. One of them was a print from Heather's West Hill collection.

Baby Quilt 

The second quilt I started with my brand new machine was based entirely around the pink mermaid print in Heather's Mendocino collection. When I finally connected the dots and realized that all of these great prints were by the same woman, she had stopped releasing quilting cottons and I was again perplexed at how to incorporate her work into my sewing.

You can imagine how excited I was to hear of her Briar Rose collection and of the recent reprint of her Far Far Away 2 collection. With a few more years of quilting experience under my belt, I stocked up on prints from both collections with a half yard bundle of each and decided to combine them into my perfect quilt. A rainbow tribute to Heather's amazing work (super lame but I'm sentimental like that) using Rae's Rainbow Quilt pattern as my jumping off point.

Rainbow Quilt

Last week, I finished cutting up all of my fabrics and arranged them in colour order.

Rainbow Quilt


I started piecing them all together last weekend and I can say that I am already head-over-heels in love with this quilt.

Rainbow Quilt

The simple construction really lets the amazing hand-drawn quality of these prints shine.

Rainbow Quilt

These collections were made for each other. There is still lots to go on this quilt but it is coming together so quickly since I just can't get enough of this one.

Rainbow Quilt

If you're looking for me this weekend, I'll be sitting at my machine.

3 comments:

  1. Ooooh that's so sweet and pretty!! What a lovely post as well. :) I started collecting fabrics for about a year before I started sewing. You weren't alone. :D

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  2. Good for you - a sewing weekend! LOVE, LOVE, LOVE HR's collections. I made a couple of baby quilts for my grandsons using her goldfish in a bag. Your first quilt looks great - would love to see more. And the one in "colour order" is so very pretty!

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  3. This is looking fantastic Amanda! Love these two lines together!

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